


Europe Is Our Playground

by GlassParade



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:50:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 53,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassParade/pseuds/GlassParade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years and half the world away from home, a chance encounter in a Paris club leads Kurt and Sebastian - each running from the ghosts of their pasts - into the diversion of chasing each other across Europe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Glide Past Every City Light

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on [my Tumblr](http://glitterdammerung.tumblr.com) in 2012. None of the photos used in the story are the property of the story author.

It’s one night, he tells himself, and he doesn’t know why a knot of disappointment settles in his stomach at the thought.

Sebastian glides his hands up the smooth body before him, starting with cupped palms covering hipbones, sliding thumbs over the slight dip of reclining abdomen, fingers crawling over ribs to underarm to tricep, slipping up up up past elbow to forearm until he’s pinning Kurt’s wrists over his head.

They lay there, silent but for breathing, steady gazes locked and charged with challenge and want.

_A gay bar in le Marais is the last, and yet the most clichéd and obvious place Sebastian Smythe would have expected to run into Kurt Hummel._

_Eight years since high school and he would have known the arrogant tilt of Kurt’s head anywhere in the world, any time. The familiar faint upturn of his lips as he listens to the pretty French boy yelling in his ear over the house beats. And the wide-eyed expression of shock as he spots Sebastian smirking at him._

_All as familiar as the back of his hand. Feeling his smirk grow wider, Sebastian lifts his drink in an ironic salute._

He’s hyperconscious of how  _warm_  Kurt’s skin is against his, how it completely fucks with his lingering high school perception that Kurt must be as cold to the touch as his attitude was frosty. They’re pressed tight together from the waist down, Sebastian’s thigh nestled between Kurt’s legs and up against what’s turned out to be a surprisingly substantial erection. It’s all heat, no ice, and when Kurt raises an eyebrow and arches his hips up in an unspoken  _ready when you are_ , Sebastian feels nothing but fire streaking down his spine.

Bending his head down, he catches Kurt’s mouth with his, grinding his hips down reflexively. He feels the moan ripped out of his throat as much as he hears it, swallows down the gasp Kurt gives him in return. They haven’t exchanged words since the hotel room door closed behind them twenty minutes ago, letting their bodies and fingers do all the communicating that was needed in ways clearer than any speaking.

Sebastian is ready, is surprised to realize that he has been ready for this for a long, long time.

“ _Fancy meeting you here,” Kurt trills, voice unchanged, still clear and sharp as the ring of a crystal bell. A glass of red wine is held loosely in his cupped hand, and he sips from it as he waits for Sebastian’s response._

“ _Oh, I don’t know if I’d call it fancy,” he drawls lazily, grinning at his own stupid joke. He’s rewarded with a roll of those fascinating color shifting eyes and a short, light laugh._

“ _I did walk into that one,” is the rueful admission, accompanied by an easy little smile with none of the animosity that used to color their interactions._

Sebastian keeps Kurt’s wrists pinned with one hand and lets the other trail a winding path back down that toned stomach to the thatch of glossy chestnut curls between Kurt’s thighs and then points south. His fingers trace along the crevice of Kurt’s ass, not invading or intruding, merely asking permission. He doesn’t completely care which way this plays out, really, he just wants them to enjoy themselves, but a part of him is leaning a little more towards wanting to bury himself inside the other man this first time, to observe Kurt falling to pieces from the vantage point of being on top, to know definitively if the heat he feels on the outside is as intense inside.

Kurt’s response is another upward press of his hips and a thready hissed “Nnnnyessss,” before he bites down on his lower lip, and Sebastian presses forward a little to let his fingers graze over the soft, dry skin for a moment before he pulls back to locate what they need next.

“ _Law?” Kurt’s eyebrows are raised over his coffee cup. Curiosity had led them to try too hard to talk at the club, and they were hoarse in short order. Sebastian wasn’t about to let his first contact with home in months escape him, so he’d tilted his head towards the door, Kurt had nodded, and they’d hustled out of the club to the streets of Paris as quickly as they could without physically throwing people out of their path. “You’re a lawyer?”_

“ _I’m a law graduate,” Sebastian corrects, fiddling with the sugar packets. They’d walked and talked for a good half hour before finally deciding to stop at a streetside café. “I don’t know if I want to be a lawyer. Yet.”_

_Kurt shakes his head, putting his cup down. “I think what’s throwing me is that you’re interested in law at all.”_

“ _Call it repentance for being such a felonious little shit.” With a shrug, Sebastian starts building a little cabin out of the packets, not really interested in discussing the personal post-degree crisis that had sent him scurrying off to hide in France. “Or familial expectations. Or both. So, Fashion Week, huh?”_

When his slick index finger breaches the tight ring of muscle, Sebastian hears a long, melting hum of pleasure spiral out of Kurt’s mouth like a ribbon unfurling from a spool. He’s not used to something so unexpectedly musical during his frequent hookups – is more accustomed to falling into rooms and beds while simultaneously tearing away clothing and trying to shove his tongue down his temporary bedmate’s throat. It’s quick and dirty and fun and he definitely does not spend hours of his life  _talking_  to these guys, no.

It’s always a carefully but swiftly negotiated exchange of brief words and speaking looks and crude gestures. And he’s fine with that, because permanence is neither something he is used to nor is particularly sure he desires.

With Kurt he’s taken the night slowly. First because he wasn’t sure it would end up here and then when it did, he kept the leisurely pace because for once, he’s fascinated by what it’s like to sleep with someone who isn’t a complete stranger, someone who even knows him somewhat well on a certain level. Someone he knows in return. To see the expressions flitting across Kurt’s normally composed face is like watching an entirely new person.

Two fingers, now, and he’s biting his own lip to keep from letting his own groan escape as he watches the long column of Kurt’s neck curve up and another sweetly agonized hum spins out.

“ _…Parsons by day and cattle calls by night, all through college. By the end of it all…” Kurt tilts one cashmere-clad shoulder up in a self-deprecating shrug. “I love performing, but it seemed unfair to not heed the call to help turn tragically clothed celebutantes into Cinderellas, so here I am.”_

“ _Here you are,” Sebastian echoes, shaking his head with a grin. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns…” He lets the quote trail off, laughing as Kurt rolls his eyes indulgently. But his curiosity is burning him from the inside out; why is Kurt in Paris, the world’s most famously romantic city, alone? “So…what about Bl-”_

_He’s cut off before he can get any more of the name out, and Kurt’s sitting ramrod straight in his tiny café chair, eyes much too bright and smile much too brittle. “And what about you? What brings you to Paris while you figure yourself out? Visiting old haunts?”_

By the time he’s sliding three fingers easily into Kurt and has watched the flush of arousal spread rosily from chest to neck to high cheekbones, Sebastian is tremendously hard, aching and feeling a sticky warmth slip down his cock as pre-come slowly beads at the tip and then trickles away. Kurt is hard too, just as hard and Sebastian can’t resist the urge to dip his head down and let his tongue furrow gently into the slit at the head of Kurt’s cock, gathering up all of the pearly droplets he sees dimly gleaming in the moonlight.

He thinks he might be addicted already to making Kurt emit moans and gasps and long, low whines of  _want_.

Because they’re both wound tight as watch springs and he  _needs_  to be inside of Kurt like,  _now_ , Sebastian allows himself only that barest of tastes before he pulls his fingers out and grabs for a condom. Need and lube make his usual swift handling of the prophylactic a little clumsy, but he manages well enough, and then he’s leaning over Kurt, one hand braced on the mattress to hold himself up and the other wrapped around his cock, poised to enter.

Kurt’s hands come up and pull Sebastian down into a hot, sloppy kiss, tasting of wine and coffee and clove lip balm. Strong fingers are gripping the nape of his neck, fingernails digging ever so slightly into his scalp in a way that makes _him_ groan uncontrollably, now, and Sebastian’s hips buck forward, the head of his cock pressing against and then suddenly  _into_  Kurt before either of them quite realize it’s happening.

_So, fine. They both have secrets, then. The man sitting across the table from Sebastian is both acquaintance and stranger all in one, familiar and not, foe and friend. Maturity has been extremely kind to Kurt Hummel, who Sebastian can now admit was already unfairly gorgeous even in high school. He’s more self-possessed now, less tightly strung, faint laugh lines of good humor around his eyes and mouth. He seems to be hanging on to no old grudges and his shoulders are uncurved, his back straight. Apart from the sour hiccup when Sebastian tried to bring up Blaine, Kurt seems to be…comfortable. With himself, in his skin, in who he is._

_Sebastian, lost wanderer of Paris that he is, envies it._

_Sebastian also wants Kurt. Badly. With an intensity that rocks him. He wants to touch him and taste him and he absolutely wants to make him come and come to pieces._

_It might be a long shot, but in looking Kurt over, in seeing the easy smile and quick laugh and, the real giveaway, Kurt’s abrupt lean across the tiny table and into Sebastian’s personal space, scattering the sugar packet cabin with a chagrined yelp…well. Maybe not so long a shot. Maybe they_ can _have tonight._

_He takes a breath, tilts his chin up. “This café is going to close soon. I have a bottle of wine back at my hotel if you want to continue talking.”_

Sebastian slows himself back down, easing carefully into Kurt one teasing, tantalizing inch at a time. His breath is coming in shuddering exhalations now, forehead pressed to Kurt’s as he steadies himself with both hands, using only his hips to push forward. When Sebastian casts his glance down, he catches glimpses of himself as he disappears into Kurt, sees the head of Kurt’s cock resting dark against the pale stretch of his abdomen. It’s a hot enough sight that he barely remembers how to breathe in anymore.

As he bottoms out, he sucks a long kiss out of Kurt, feeling the aroused moans vibrating his lips and teeth and even his throat, they’re so intense and go on so long. Sebastian breaks away with an exhalation that’s half sigh and half groan, presses his forehead back against Kurt’s, and squeezes his eyes shut, all his concentration centering on his cock and the incredible tight heat that surrounds it as he begins to thrust in earnest.

Kurt’s legs are wrapped around Sebastian’s waist, pulling him in so tight and close that all Sebastian can do is roll his hips forward over and over, unable to pull out very far before he’s buried deep all over again. He’s braced down on his forearms, now, fingers woven together and clasped over Kurt’s head, so there’s just about no inch of one man that isn’t touching the other. There’s nothing between them but light sweat and heat and then, slowly, Kurt’s hand. It slips between their stomachs to trail down to encircle Kurt’s straining erection, a lush sigh of delight puffing out of his mouth as he begins to stroke himself.

And Sebastian  _loves_  it, loves that he’s made Kurt make those sounds, that he’s made Kurt  _need_  to touch himself,  _need_ to come. With anyone else it’s always been about each participant making sure he gets his, but it turns out fucking someone you know is just really a whole lot different, what with finding out what’s beneath the clothing both literally and metaphorically. He feels like he’s back in law school again, learning something new and fascinating, only, you know, way more naked than in any class and having a lot more fun with the whole process.

“Oh, fuck me, yes, nnnnyes, fuck, yes,” and wow, Sebastian would never have pegged Kurt for a dirty talker, but it’s amazingly hot and what can he do but obey?

“ _I’m not interested in wine,” Kurt says, arching one eyebrow and there’s that smirk again._

“ _Oh.”_

“ _But I am interested in your hotel room.”_

They’re both gasping incoherently through gritted teeth when Kurt comes first, the tendons in his neck stretched tight as he throws his head back, hot ejaculate streaking across Sebastian’s abdomen. The hand not holding his twitching cock is wrapped around the back of Sebastian’s neck again, fingernails digging in harder now right before Kurt grabs what hair he can and _pulls_  and that is  _it_ for Sebastian, his hips thrust hard in against Kurt’s amazingly tight thighs and ass (and oh, yes, he wants to explore that entire area later tonight, he does, with his tongue, if time permits) as he comes in spurts that shake him head to toe.

When the aftershocks stop pulsing through his body, Sebastian surprises himself by surrendering to the impulse to kiss Kurt again, hard and primal, tangling his fingers in that impossibly thick hair and rolling his hips forward once, twice more before finally settling down, withdrawing and rolling immediately onto his back next to Kurt. Disposing of the condom is tended to quickly and discreetly thanks to the trash can right by the bed.

Sebastian is deep in thought.

He doesn’t kiss his hookups once they’re done fucking. Ever. It’s an unspoken rule and they all follow it, and now he’s broken it himself.

Not that Kurt is any kind of normal hookup.

And of course, they’re not done, not if he has anything to say about it. Short on time, maybe, but not done. If they have one night – and he can’t imagine that they’d have any more, it’s insane enough that they have this one at all – then he’s going to make the most of it.

Beside him, Kurt chuckles. “Well.”

“Well?” He turns his head and can’t help but smile at the grin on Kurt’s face that cannot be described in any other term but  _shit eating_. “Don’t you look pleased with yourself.”

“And you don’t?” Raising his arms over his head, Kurt stretches, long and luxurious, wiggling his toes and rotating his hands at the wrist. When he’s done, he lets out a contented hum. “I do  _not_  want to get up.”

“You don’t have to.” Outwardly, Sebastian shrugs and makes damn sure his expression is casual. Inwardly, he’s making a mental list of all the places on Kurt’s body he wants to taste. “Bed’s big enough for two, if you don’t have anywhere important to be anytime soon.”

Kurt casts him a sidelong glance. “Funny. I never took you for the sleepover type.”

“I’m not,” Sebastian admits before rolling on top of Kurt and stretching out to cover him head to toe. “Then again, I have no intention of sleeping.”

It’s semantics, but what the hell. He’s already broken one of his personal hookup rules, what could a little bending of just one more possibly hurt?


	2. I Wanna Make You Move Because You're Standing Still

Kurt is astonished to discover that Sebastian is, like, the fucking Houdini of tight pants. If there were a Guinness Book record for speed removal of constricting clothing, Sebastian would hold it. In both the Solo and Partnered categories.

Shit, Kurt hadn’t had to lift a finger, and only the cold shock of the glass window on his backside let him know his jeans and underpants were gone at all. And then he only had a second to process  _that_  before Sebastian’s mouth was doing things that Kurt had previously been fairly certain only happened in the Kama Sutra.

_Message From Kurt: Do you like Czech food?_

_Message From Sebastian: …hello to you, too. No idea, never tried it._

_Message From Kurt: Would you like to?_

_Message From Sebastian: Sure. Why not. Where’d you find Czech food in Paris?_

_Message From Kurt: I didn’t. I’m in Prague. Dinner at 8?_

Kurt’s sphere of reference is limited – there’s only been Blaine and a couple of regrettable post-split one night stands in his young life – but he’s willing to swear on that very life that this is right up there in the top 5 blowjobs he’s _ever_  gotten.

Sebastian’s mouth is hot, tight and mobile, and Kurt’s fingers fold down around the lip of the windowsill, head tilting back to give voice to the long groan that winds out of him, starting somewhere around his curling toes and climbing deliciously up his legs, slipping along his shivering spine, warming his throat and spilling out of his mouth. What’s being done to his cock is  _obscene_ – he hadn’t known a tongue could be that wickedly nimble.

It’s all he’d hoped for when he woke up this morning with an incredible cockstand and his phone within arm’s reach on the bedside table.

_Message From Sebastian: You want me to come to Czechoslovakia for a dinner date?_

_Message From Kurt: It’s been the Czech Republic since we were in diapers. And it doesn’t have to be just dinner; I found a fantastic little k_ _oláče_   _place near my hotel. Buy you breakfast? Coffee’s fabulous here._

_Message From Sebastian: Wow, one, I can’t believe you turned on your phone’s Czech keyboard just so you could spell a breakfast food with all the fancy little dashes. Two, may I commend you on the smoothness of your delivery on that sleepover invitation? Nice._

_Message From Kurt: Only if it works._

Sebastian’s grip is firm enough that it’s going to leave bruises in the outline of his long thumbs and fingers along Kurt’s hipbones and ass. That’s fine; Kurt’s grip on the windowsill feels like it could just about crumble the white painted wood. And he likes the ache of it, the little pain that is the last thing keeping him tethered to the ground while Sebastian’s tongue is pressed flat against the underside of his shaft, while the head of his cock is sucked up against the roof of Sebastian’s mouth as if they’d been molded to fit together.

Kurt’s toes curl into the plush carpet when Sebastian sucks in a hard, deep breath through his nose before opening his lips just enough to loosen the suction and then – oh, God _damn_  it, then he’s got just about all of Kurt’s dick in his mouth and throat for a moment and it’s  _so_  hot and  _so_  very very tight and this blowjob is really climbing the charts, Jesus fucking  _Christ_.

When Kurt twists his head to rest his heated cheek against the window, his eyes twitch open the slightest bit, letting him see the reflection of the moon on the Vltava and the spires of Prague Castle, and he can’t help the satisfied smirk that’s tilting the corners of his mouth.

_Message From Sebastian: Let me get this straight. Kurt Hummel, are you of all people making a transcontinental booty call?_

_Message From Kurt: Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just play Go Fish all night. If you want to find out, I suppose you’ll just have to come to Prague._

_Message From Sebastian: Really. Setting a pretty high price on your stock there, don’t you think?_

_Message From Kurt: Got a lucky deck of cards? You might want to bring them._

If there is one thing Sebastian Smythe really prides himself on in the bedroom, it’s his oral skills. Hands down. He’s always had control issues and an oral fixation- his lollipop stash was and still is epic – and when he figured out he was gay? Porn let him know right away that he was pretty much  _born_  to suck cock.

He likes the heated bulk of an erect dick in his mouth, likes how he’s basically in control of how fast or slow his partner becomes unraveled by the flicks and twists of his tongue. He can see Kurt’s fingers flexing and curling around the windowsill, can hear animal groans overhead, and it’s all down to what he’s doing. This kind of power is a complete aphrodisiac for Sebastian; he’s been known to come without ever touching himself, just hearing and feeling what he’s causing his partner to feel.

Under his hands, Kurt’s hips shift and gently buck forward, the muscles of his ass clenching as he fights to not shove his cock hard down Sebastian’s throat. Kurt, too, has something of a controlling streak, Sebastian knows, and oh, he’s having the best time learning how to subvert it.

He drags his teeth ever so very lightly over the ridge separating head from shaft and is rewarded with a groan muffled through clenched teeth and a hand shooting down to fist in his hair. When his own cock stiffens and rises to standing, he knows it’s going to be one of  _those_  nights and all he can feel is satisfaction as bright as burning.

_Setting his phone down on the desk in his tiny Paris hotel room, Sebastian glances around at what his life has become in the last several months. His trust fund has financed a decent, if spare room in the 13 th Arrondissement, allowed him to get drunk and bring a string of pretty European boys back for meaningless sex on a regular basis, and kept him fed._

_He hasn’t left Paris since he arrived, and he’s kept to essentially the same clutch of districts, in search only of distraction and sustenance._

_Kurt’s flirty messages are a temptation. A bigger distraction than any wide-eyed Italian boy on a dimly lit dance floor. They pull him out of his complacency and put his fertile, yet wine-soaked and intellectually dormant mind to work._

_Sebastian has an idea._

Sebastian swallows down as much of Kurt’s cock as he can, enjoying the saltiness of pre-come that trickles down his throat. They had not, of course, bothered with dinner. As soon as Kurt had opened the door of his room at the Mandarin Oriental, Sebastian had him up against the window, deftly stripping off their clothing and managing to keep Kurt distracted with hot, sucking kisses and grinding hips. Kurt had already been hard then, and Sebastian wondered what he’d been thinking of all day to cause it.

He’s pretty sure at least part of it was memories of their debauched night in Paris, and he  _loves_  that.

Pulling back up off of Kurt’s cock, Sebastian rolls his eyes upward to see Kurt staring down at him, eyes wide and high cheekbones flushed pink. Experimentally, he flicks his tongue out and swirls it around the thick, rosy head of the dick before him, lush, luxurious strokes with the flat of his tongue washing over and over the velvety hot skin.

Overhead, Kurt squeezes his eyes shut and his fingers clench white-knuckled on the windowsill. Sebastian knows that the grin that spreads across his face at this is nothing short of evil, but he can’t  _help_  it, Kurt’s the most fascinating lover he’s ever taken apart and it’s amazing.

He can tell it won’t be much longer for either of them. Licking his lips, Sebastian takes a deep breath and dives back in, letting his tongue drag along the folds and veins of the shaft in his mouth before he begins to suck and taste in earnest.

_It doesn’t take long to pack up his things, and then there’s only arrangements to be made. Fortunately, in this age of nearly boundless internet and his good credit, this too is a quick matter, and then he’s shoving his laptop into his carry-on bag, catching up his suitcase, and checking out of his hotel room for the first time in three months._

_He has no intention of coming back._

_This is going to be a very interesting month or two for both of them, he thinks, and excitement puts a swagger in his step that’s been missing for a while. By the time he hails a cab for De Gaulle International, he’s practically whistling._

Kurt tries, he really does try to hold back and savor each delicious sucking pass of Sebastian’s lips and tongue. He’d spent most of his day in bed, rather than exploring Prague, fingers wrapped around his cock and stroking himself to orgasm a half a dozen times or more from the time he woke until he at last reluctantly dragged himself into the shower. Where memories of Sebastian fucking him senseless in Paris led him to jerk off twice more before he finally managed to get himself clean, groomed, and dressed.

He would have thought such masturbatory excess would have enabled him to last, but Sebastian’s skills in fellatio are nothing short of expert, and the man does seem determined.

Kurt has to bite down hard on his lip to keep from disturbing the neighbors when he comes, one hand tangled in Sebastian’s thick brown hair and the other braced against the wall. Sebastian’s hands clench even tighter at his hips and ass and pull him forward, deeper into voracious mouth and throat that swallows down every hot mouthful of come that spurts out.

_Message From Sebastian: All right. I’ve landed and thank fuck for international phone plans. Where am I telling the cabbie to go? Type it out in Czech, I’ve never learned the language._

_Message From Kurt: No need for Czech, I’m at the Mandarin Oriental. Give the front desk staff your name; they’re expecting you._

_Message From Sebastian: Pretty sure of your odds, were you?_

_Message From Kurt: No one turns down strip Go Fish._

_Message From Sebastian: You never said anything about stripping._

_Message From Kurt: I thought it was implied in the invitation._

With a luxurious groan, Kurt slips to the thickly carpeted floor and tries to catch his breath. He leans his head against the wall, thinking he will return the favor in a moment or two, just as soon as aftershocks aren’t electrifying his calves and back.  _Definitely in the top five_ , he decides with a grin, sucking in a deep breath and opening his eyes.

To his surprise, Sebastian is already on his feet, tugging his boxers and jeans back on. “What the hell?” Kurt blurts out, more offended than he has ever been in his life, even going back to his senior year and the endless rounds of verbal evisceration he’d been subject to from Sebastian.

Sebastian leaves off buttoning his jeans back up and slides down onto his knees at Kurt’s side, catching him up in a kiss that just serves to make Kurt angrier, because it sure as hell looks like he’s not getting more of them. “Don’t get mad,” Sebastian tells him, and it is all Kurt can do not to strangle him on the spot.

“Explain,” he grits out, crossing his arms and turning his iciest glare onto the other man. “ _Quickly_.”

“I would absolutely love to stay, I really would,” is the far from reassuring response as Sebastian gets back to his feet and pulls his rugby shirt back on. “But I have a plane leaving in two hours and I  _absolutely_ need to be on it.”

“Do you.”

“Mmhm.” Sitting down on the room’s love seat, Sebastian begins pulling on his sneakers and grins at Kurt while he laces them up. “Would you like to hear _why_  I’m leaving?”

Kurt’s eyelashes flutter as he tilts his chin up and smiles tightly. “Do tell. I am absolutely  _spellbound_.”

The hauteur in his voice has broken many a lesser man, but Sebastian just rolls his damnable green eyes and keeps grinning. “Well, Kurt, thing is…” He stoops down to pick up his other shoe and slides it on. “I’ve gotten kind of bored in Paris. And I was thinking, why not see Europe?”

“And  _now_  seemed like a good time?” Kurt can’t help it. He’s really annoyed and he knows he has started to pout. He’d  _really_  been looking forward to spending the entire night fucking and having his brains fucked out.

“Yup.” Sebastian gets to his feet and picks up the leather satchel he’d thrown down on a squashy red chair. Extracting his phone, he taps at the screen for a minute or two before glancing back up at Kurt. “Your phone is going to go off in a couple of minutes. But, uh, I don’t want you to look at it until I’ve been gone for at least half an hour.”

“What?” Kurt pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut tight. “Why? What the hell, Sebastian?”

Sebastian tips his head and smiles, appearing to be thoroughly pleased with himself. “Kurt, what are you doing over the next few weeks?”

Frowning, Kurt shrugs, but goes along with it and answers, hoping it will in turn net  _him_ a few of his own. “Nothing special. I’m done with the ready to wear shows, so I was just going to run around Europe for a while. This is the first time I’ve been here as a designer and not someone’s assistant.”

Sebastian’s grin just gets even wider. “So…wanna play a game?”

_Picture Message From Sebastian:_

__

_Message From Sebastian: Here’s your first clue._

_Message From Sebastian: The next picture clue will be taken on location._

_Message From Sebastian: Hang tight, guess right, and I’ll make tonight up to you._


	3. Skip The Airstrip To The Sunset

_Message From Sebastian: Figure it out yet?_

_Message From Kurt: You have a LOT of nerve._

_Message From Sebastian: Poor baby. YOU didn’t have to get on a plane to Zurich with a raging case of blue balls._

_Message From Kurt: Whose fault is that? Not mine, thank you. So you’re in Switzerland?_

_Message From Sebastian: Please. I’m easy, but not THAT easy. Want your next clue?_

Kurt is exhausted, travel grimy, desperately needs to eat, and doesn’t actually care about any of that right now.

It’s twilight shading to full dark in their particular slice of Europe, but the brick wall Kurt’s pushed up against is still warmed from the sunshine it had been bathed in all day. The heat is seeping through his t-shirt, melting tension and tiredness out of his back, and it’s nice – but not as nice or as warm as Sebastian’s hands, which have slipped up under the hem of the t-shirt and are sliding up along Kurt’s torso, thumbs stroking steadily over his nipples until both of them are peaked and pebbled and Kurt is fighting not to groan too loudly.

They may be concealed by the shadows falling with the night, but care must still be taken. They’re still surrounded by throngs of tourists, and there’s a noisy beer garden not too many steps away. Kurt can hear the shouts and laughter, the boisterous music and the clinking of bottles.

The thrill of potential discovery makes Kurt arch his hips forward, pressing his groin hard into Sebastian’s even as he drags this enigmatic lover down into a kiss that leaves them both panting.

_Along with his excellent hair and boyish good looks, one thing that has not diminished since Kurt Hummel was a teenager is his ability to be fabulous on a budget. In fact, it’s more well-rounded than ever, having branched out from its roots in his impeccable high school wardrobe to encompass inexpensive but impressive cooking, ferociously fashionable thrifted furniture – and, best of all, travel._

_Kurt has money, of course. Being the next Alexander McQueen, the new darling of the fashion world, the toast of debutantes and socialites on multiple continents, it does have its perks and money is the best of them. But Kurt is also very much his father’s son and a creature of habit. He doesn’t see the point in spending more than he has to in pursuit of fun and fabulosity, so he doesn’t. He’s been a member of five frequent flyer programs since he was eighteen, uses credit cards that earn him double and triple miles per transaction, and after several painful years of practice, he’s finally learned how to travel with nothing more than two excellently packed carry-on Vuittons._

_So he is perfectly prepared and well-equipped for playing Sebastian’s little game._

_Or he would be, if he knew where he was going. His bags are packed, his hotel room is in impeccable order, and he’s got his favorite travel agent on speed dial. Kurt is ready to leave Prague whenever Sebastian is ready to be a little more forthcoming._

_1 New Photo Message, his screen helpfully blinks._

Sebastian’s hands seem to have minds of their own, the way they roam over Kurt’s body, squeezing and pinching and lightly scratching here and there. Kurt feels completely covered and consumed in Sebastian’s desire, lets himself be happily carried along on a tidal wave of rising lust. He’s not idle himself, keeping himself busy with kisses and caresses and learning exactly what makes Sebastian groan helplessly into his mouth.

The slow roll of Kurt’s hips into Sebastian’s – check.

A long, tugging bite at Sebastian’s lower lip – check.

Hot breaths in Sebastian’s ear just before Kurt seals his eager mouth against the long column of his throat – check.

Kurt – check.

Well, that’s awfully empowering.

_Picture Message From Sebastian:_

_Message From Sebastian: Better?_

_Message From Kurt: The Little Mermaid? What the hell’s in Copenhagen?_

_Message From Sebastian: Uh, me?_

_Message From Kurt: …_

_Message From Kurt: Touché._

A roller coaster goes clattering by overhead, the shrieks of its riders filling the night air and helping to cover the sound of the increasingly frantic little breaths spilling out of Kurt’s mouth. Sebastian has both hands fisted in the material of Kurt’s t-shirt at his waist, clenched tight like he’s clinging for dear life to something that can save him. Kurt’s back against the wall is the only thing keeping  _him_  up at this point, his knees are so weak from the kissing and grinding he doesn’t want to stop.

Would the hotel room bed be more comfortable? Of course it would. They could be naked right now. Naked and exploring each other’s bodies with tongues and fingers, the press of warm bare skin and the taste of come. A rainforest shower, air conditioning and 1000 thread count sheets. The decadent promise of room service.

But if anyone were to try and interrupt them now for fucking  _logic_ , Kurt would tear them to shreds. He is  _exactly_  where he wants to be in this moment, his dick straining hard against his tight jeans, hips jutting forward and grinding against Sebastian’s equally hard cock. At some point Kurt’s wrists got pinned over his head and he feels deliciously helpless, at Sebastian’s mercy. Just as he’s learning what takes Sebastian apart, so is he being studied as well.

Hands-on learning, it always  _had_  been his favorite.

_Kurt stares at his phone, flipping between the photo of what he now knows is Amalienborg Palace and the picture of the Little Mermaid. He wonders what made Sebastian pick Denmark of all places. Does it have special meaning, or did he close his eyes and point at a map?_

_For all that there’s history between them, what he actually knows about Sebastian could just about fill a thimble. Kurt doesn’t know what makes the guy tick, what his favorite color is, what he likes to drink apart from coffee or beer, what his opinions are on any kind of music at all, why he ran away from the United States immediately after graduating from law school._

_Kurt also doesn’t know why he’s curious about any of this. But time is ticking away, and more important than his curiosity is playing the game._

_He swipes his thumb across his phone and ticks Vivian’s number. “Hey, Viv,” he greets his travel guru absently, running his index finger along the thin silver chain around his neck. He always stops just short of touching the object that depends from the chain, avoiding it with an almost superstitious scrupulousness. “Listen, change of plans. Can you get me on the next flight to Copenhagen?” He smiles at her shriek of surprise. “Yes, really…well, I don’t know, I’m having a Hans Christian Andersen moment or something. Can you? Great.”_

Sebastian tastes like beer and breath mints, the icy coolness of the peppermint tingling on Kurt’s tongue as he probes and sweeps inside the soft warmth. Each push of their hips, each grind and hitch makes breath come with increasing shortness, heightens the color in their cheeks. Kissing is getting to be extremely difficult now as both men strain harder to be as close as humanly possible given the barrier of their clothing.

Kurt’s head drops, his eyelids fluttering shut as his fingers tense and bend, pulling his hands free to scrape his nails across the back of Sebastian’s neck. The long, deep groan that pours out of Sebastian triggers a fleeting memory of Paris in Kurt’s recollection – but he has only a second to remember what it means before he feels a pair of strong, eager hands slap down to grab his ass and hold him still while Sebastian’s hips move frantically to slide denim-clad cock against neatly trousered dick.

He doesn’t know if he’s riding or being ridden and it doesn’t matter. The head of his cock slips against the silk of his boxers, a delicious friction as Sebastian grinds against him.

Kurt wonders what Sebastian’s wearing under those perfectly tailored trousers.

Part of him hopes it’s nothing at all.

_It takes Vivian a few minutes of keyboard clattering to get him a flight, but Lufthansa comes through in the end – thank god for the StarAlliance – and Vivian is instructing him to get moving now, like right now or else -_

“ _Actually, Viv…there’s one more flight I need, tomorrow afternoon…yeah, actually, you’re kind of gonna be getting a workout from me over the next few weeks…of course I’ll make it worth your while. Anything from the new spring collection, even my assistants haven’t seen the sketches, you’ll be the first…”_

_Sebastian wants a game? Well, lucky for him Kurt’s inclined to play along._

“Fuck, Kurt, fuck, Jesus, fuck.” Sebastian has previously demonstrated himself to be more eloquent than this, but Kurt can’t summon up the mental capacity to judge him for being reduced to blasphemies and expletives. Not when they’re mere ticks of the clock away from sweet release. “Hot, Jesus, you’re just…you’re hot, I want you, we’re gonna go back to the hotel room and I’m gonna…fuck, God…show you every fantasy I’ve had about you just today…”

His hands on Kurt’s ass keep trying to pull them more closely together but there’s  _literally no room left_ , Kurt has his arms around Sebastian’s neck, hands up and palming the back of Sebastian’s head. They’re in and around each other, frenzied sobbing breaths tumbling between them with every desperate roll of their hips. Kurt’s head dips again, just a quick bob down before he decides he wants to be kissing Sebastian when they start to come.

Kurt catches a quick glimpse of green eyes, heavy lidded and a little surprised just before he jerks forward and sucks Sebastian’s bottom lip into his mouth.

_When Kurt lands in Copenhagen, there’s a text message waiting for him._

_Message From Sebastian: We’re at the Radisson Blu Royal, room 2015. Text me after you dump your bags._

_There’s no shuttle – the airport is too far from the hotel – but Kurt catches a taxi easily enough, and the ride isn’t even that long, really, though it feels like it is because he started remembering the events of the night before while he was on the plane, which made disembarking somewhat awkward. He feels, momentarily, a flash of sympathy for Sebastian, then remembers it’s Sebastian’s fault either of them have blue balls in the first place, and spends the taxi ride in a confusing tangle of arousal and annoyance._

_Sebastian isn’t at the hotel when Kurt arrives, which he sort of expected since Sebastian told him to text when he arrived, but it irks Kurt all the same._

There’s a fortuitous burst of cheering from the beer garden when Sebastian begins to jerk and shudder against Kurt, cheering that conveniently covers the satisfyingly loud groan he’s unable to keep behind his teeth. But there’s no time to bask in the smug delight of having dismantled Sebastian so very thoroughly, because Kurt’s burying his own shout of ecstasy in the crook of Sebastian’s neck, shivers overtaking him entirely as he comes.

Hips buck hard, lips are almost bitten through, fingers are white-knuckled with the odd commingling of tension and release.

_Message From Kurt: I’m here._

_Message From Sebastian: Great. Now leave the hotel._

_Message From Kurt: You cannot BEGIN to imagine what I want to do to you right now._

_Message From Sebastian: Nope! Surprise me._

_Message From Kurt: I’m going to KILL you, you complete asshole._

_Message From Sebastian: Someone’s cranky. I can kiss it and make it better._

_Message From Kurt: Then you better pucker up, buttercup, because you are in for a SERIOUSLY long night._

_Message From Sebastian: Yeah, yeah. Are you outside yet?_

_Message From Kurt: Yes._

_Message From Sebastian: Do you like roller coasters?_

_Kurt frowns, confused – and then glances up and realizes what’s standing on the opposite street corner from the hotel._

_Oh._

Kurt slumps back against the wall, trying hard to catch his breath. Sebastian, leaning with his head down, can’t even seem to open his eyes. “I’m brilliant.”

The drowsy assertion makes Kurt snort out a tired laugh. “Really.”

“Mmhm. Hotel’s right across the street.” Sebastian pulls back, a lazy grin beginning to turn his mouth up. “As soon as we can walk again, I’m dragging you back to the room so you can shower and then let me fuck you stupid.”

Kurt stretches his arms up over his head, reveling in the feel of his spine popping and unkinking. For the life of him, if someone were to put a gun to his head and tell him to pick which one he’d prefer at this moment, he would be completely unable to decide.

“What, you can’t manage both at once?”

_Sebastian sleeps like the dead and neither of them are into cuddling, so it’s easy enough for Kurt to slip out of the bed late the next morning and get ready to leave. He gets a delicious but all too short shower – a pang of regret spears him right in his appreciation of luxury, he should have told Vivian to book his flight another day out – and chuckles softly to see Sebastian still deeply asleep, snoring lightly and sprawled out across the bed like a cat. The white of the bedsheet contrasts nicely with his light tan, and Kurt takes a valuable moment to appreciate the lean, well-muscled and lightly freckled expanse of his back._

_Mmm. Nice. Very nice._

_Before he can talk himself into calling Vivian and rebooking, Kurt grabs his bags and quietly lets himself out of the hotel room. Only when he’s safely buckled into his airplane seat and the flight attendants are about to tell them to turn off their electronic devices does he perform a quick image search, sending his favorite result to Sebastian._

_Message From Kurt: Catch me if you can._

_Picture Message From Kurt:_


	4. Trying To Find The In Between

_Tilting his head, Sebastian regards the imposing structure before him, admiring the spires that pierce the bright blue of the sky. The sight of it never gets old; it’s one of his favorite places to visit in one of his favorite cities in Europe._

_He checks the view in front of him against the photo on his phone that Kurt sent him. Yep. It’s a match, sent a little less than an hour ago with the message,_ about to go see this, too bad you can’t meet me here.

_Tourists bustle around Sebastian as he turns around and carefully aims his phone camera so that he gets a good shot that clearly shows him standing in front of Sagrada Familia. He makes sure to make his smile as big and obnoxious as possible before swiping his thumb over the button to snap the picture. In another moment, it’s sent off and he shoves both phone and hands into his pockets, still grinning like an idiot while he rocks back and forth on his feet._

_He’s expecting just an indignant message in return, but everything works out even better than he could ever have anticipated when in less than five minutes, he hears a muffled “Son of a bitch” in a very distinct and familiar voice only a few feet away._

“ _I_ love _Barcelona in the summertime,” Sebastian volunteers cheerfully when a very put out Kurt emerges from a clump of nearby tourists._

Kissing Kurt is rapidly becoming Sebastian’s favorite new pastime.

It doesn’t matter how or where or what he’s kissing, Sebastian really,  _really_ likes kissing Kurt a lot. He likes his tongue, he likes the taste of his mouth – still mint and clove and sometimes wine or coffee – he likes the smooth arcs of Kurt’s shoulder blades and the taut firmness of his ass, he likes the soft skin of his inner thigh and most of all, he really likes Kurt’s neck.

Yes, kissing Kurt – or maybe just Kurt generally, though it’s best not to think about that too closely – is a drug to which Sebastian is growing increasingly addicted.

Slowly, he savors the drag of his tongue along the soft skin where shoulder meets neck, trails just the tip of it up the curve leading to Kurt’s ear, where he lightly nips at the lobe. As Kurt shudders back against him, Sebastian traces his fingers down Kurt’s arms, leaning in closer and closer as he follows the path down to Kurt’s hands.

He tangles their fingers together, feels his cock making itself rather comfortably at home in the warm cleft of Kurt’s ass. “Brace yourself,” he whispers, curling Kurt’s fingers carefully around the wooden bars of the bed frame.

“ _So you’ve been here before,” Kurt grumbles, pocketing his phone and holding a hand out to take Sebastian’s shoulder bag. “Should have known. Is this actually a challenge for you at all?”_

“ _This city wasn’t,” Sebastian admits, dipping his head in a tiny apology. “I recognized Parc Güell right away and I got lucky with a plane… but there’s still tons of places in Europe I haven’t been. And I wasn’t kidding when I said I loved it here. I do. So…thanks. For picking it.”_

_But Kurt still looks a little crestfallen in a way that, disturbingly, makes Sebastian want to kiss him until he smiles._

_He shakes it off, nudging Kurt’s arm. “Hey,” he whispers. “There’s no losing in this game. So I guessed where you were really fast. It just means I’m here early and we have more time to fuck around together. Right?”_

_A speculative look creeps across Kurt’s face and he nods, lips pursed thoughtfully. “That is true.” When he glances up at Sebastian, his eyes are distinctly mischievous. “Can’t check into our hotel for another hour though. They’re holding my bags at the desk.”_

“ _That’s fine.” And it is. “Let’s drop mine off and I’ll treat you to the best view in Barcelona. Unless you’re afraid of heights?”_

Sebastian’s palms follow the reverse path of his fingers and glide back over Kurt’s arms and shoulders. He can feel the tension crackling off of Kurt as he wonders what Sebastian is going to do, chuckles low against Kurt’s back while he trails kisses and bites along his spine. He has a few things he wonders himself, like how long Kurt is going to let Sebastian get away with doing basically whatever he wants to and with Kurt’s body.

He finds himself to be surprisingly okay with leaving the time to be indeterminate. Making Kurt feel good and fall apart provides a gratification he’d never anticipated. Sebastian is used to giving lovers only so much before he demands reciprocation, fucks from the top because it’s a power trip.

And he never, ever kneels behind anyone, never reaches forward and strokes a slow hand over the firm mound of their ass, certainly never pulls their cheeks carefully apart and just slides the tip of his tongue right inside of them.

When the broken moan growls its way out of Kurt’s chest, Sebastian decides that reserving this particular delight for this particular lover was a very good idea, because no one else could ever make  _that_ sound. It curls right through him like a swallow of good brandy, warming him from the inside out and stiffening his cock.

Experimentally, he begins to slowly fuck his tongue in and out of Kurt, pulling back sometimes to press kisses to the soft, smooth skin in this hidden area. His fingers squeeze and knead Kurt’s ass as he licks and sucks and thrusts, and every soft moan and gasp overhead cements his certainty that only Kurt was the right person to appreciate this.

_Kurt is not afraid of heights. Though even if he were, Sebastian would be doing a masterful job of distracting him from his phobia._

_He’s got his palms pressed to the window of the gondola they’re occupying by themselves after Sebastian winked and slipped the tramway operator a few Euros. The view of Barcelona from the sky is indeed breathtaking, water and boats and sprawling city teeming with people that look like…well. Ants. They’re pretty high up._

_Sebastian is all but plastered to his back, one hand trailing teasingly along the waistband of Kurt’s loose linen trousers. The other hand is resting on Kurt’s forehead, pulling his head gently to the side and exposing his neck so that Sebastian can nip and mouth the skin, sucking light kisses that tingle all the way down to Kurt’s toes._

_The aerial ride into Montjuïc is short, so they can’t get up to any serious shenanigans, which is peculiarly fine by Kurt. The tram ride lacks all of the frenzy of their previous encounters, is instead permeated with a lazy sensuality that is almost sweet in its slow burn. Kurt sags back against Sebastian a little, content to let himself be cradled, held, wanted._

_It’s been a very long time since he’s been in someone’s arms in precisely this way._

_The silver chain around his neck is heavy with memories that threaten to intrude and ruin his contentment, memories he is in constant battle to push down and lock away. It reminds him of someone else’s arms, someone else’s kisses, of love and promises that turned to dust and blew away._

_This is not the time or place to think of these things. And even if it were, for the first time in two years, Kurt finds himself wanting to live in the present rather than wallowing in the past. The present, he decides, is an unfolding adventure that he is really enjoying._

_With effort, Kurt focuses on the city below, on its people and buildings and parks and trees. He relaxes into the attention being paid to his body, enjoys the roaming hands and hot kisses. Sebastian seems to like doing things to Kurt and for right now, Kurt is perfectly happy to let him, because Sebastian is, as it turns out, stupendously good at what he does and takes obvious pride in the results of his work._

_Kurt sucks his bottom lip in and bites down as Sebastian scrapes a particularly sensitive patch of skin with his teeth. The sting sends a shiver rocketing down Kurt’s spine, and he involuntarily shoves his ass more firmly against Sebastian’s crotch. Oh, yes, right now, he really is happy to let Sebastian spoil him rotten. For the moment._

“ _Descent,” Sebastian murmurs into Kurt’s neck, disengaging with obvious reluctance. They’re approaching the fortress slowly enough that they’ll be able to calm down a bit before they have to disembark._

_On the return trip, Kurt thinks, I’m going to shove him down on that bench and show him a few tricks of my own._

He’s pretty sure he could make Kurt come just with tongue-fucking his asshole, but the way Kurt keeps shifting his ass back and groaning just makes Sebastian so hard he’s about to burst. He wants to be buried inside of Kurt  _now_ , fingers gripping tight at shoulders and waist, fucking long, drawn-out strokes of his cock in and out with slow shifts of his hips.

With a sigh, Sebastian withdraws and pats Kurt’s ass before rolling off the bed. “Don’t go anywhere,” he jokes weakly, and is rewarded with a ragged laugh and gentle sigh.

When he comes back he wraps his free arm tight around Kurt’s chest and holds him so close he can feel his heart beating against Kurt’s back. It’s torture to be so slow and careful when both of them are so hard, but Sebastian won’t skimp and anyway, he likes watching what he can see of Kurt’s face as he works his fingers into him. Kurt’s bottom lip is always so red from his constant sucking and biting, his eyes so dark, his skin flushed that faint pink from excitement and exertion. He drops his head and breathes hard as Sebastian’s fingers open him up.

They don’t exchange words when Kurt’s ready and Sebastian can’t wait anymore, Kurt simply tilts his head just enough to catch Sebastian’s gaze out of the corner of his eye and then he nods, once, nearly imperceptibly.

_He’s seen it every time he undresses Kurt, so the sight of the platinum band dangling from the silver chain isn’t surprising to Sebastian at this point. He knows what it looks like, knows the soft sound it makes when it comes loose from Kurt’s shirt and thumps back down against Kurt’s chest._

_What he doesn’t know is what it is. Is it a promise ring? An engagement ring? A wedding band? Sebastian isn’t stupid, he knows it’s something to do with Blaine. But what? Was there a wedding at some point? Or was it bought with hope and kept after hope withered and died on the vine?_

_He is aware enough of who Kurt is to be reasonably certain that it’s a memento, not a symbol. Kurt is moral, loyal, compassionate. He has all the compunctions that Sebastian lacks when it comes to cheating on a partner. So they are not cuckolding Blaine._

_If anything, with the ring a constant presence, it’s like Blaine is actually there between them sometimes. A looming, gentle, silent and occasionally suffocating presence._

_They have a routine by now. Sebastian tosses Kurt’s shirt aside and waits while Kurt quietly unclasps the chain and drops it onto the end table on the right side of their hotel bed. It will stay there until they’re sated, until Kurt picks it up on his way back from the bathroom and puts it back on without a word. At some point in the night Sebastian will wake up with Kurt curled around his back, the platinum an icy burn against Sebastian’s skin._

They’re both wound tighter than watch springs by the time Sebastian eases all the way inside of Kurt, but the slow simmer of their day together in the heart of Catalonia wraps around them and entices them to keep things leisurely, sweet and hot and drawn out as long as they can stand it.

Sebastian closes his eyes, pressing his lips to Kurt’s shoulder as he rolls his hips forward, languorous thrusts in a steady rhythm. The hand he’d had teasing along Kurt’s waistband in the Montjuïc tramway car isn’t teasing now, is firmly wrapped around Kurt’s cock and pulling in long strokes. Stroke, thrust, stroke, thrust, breathe, gasp, shiver…

He opens his eyes a little and tilts his head to watch Kurt. Kurt’s head is tipped back, mouth open just slightly, just enough to let soft breaths escape with each thrust of Sebastian’s cock. But his eyes are closed and Sebastian almost forgets to move, so fascinating is it to see exactly what Kurt Hummel really looks like when he’s completely lost in a moment.

“I’m gonna…” Kurt’s arm tightens under Sebastian’s chin as he grips the headboard more tightly and lets out a shivery gasp. “Sebastian -!”

He’s biting his lip again when he comes all over Sebastian’s hand, all flushed and hot and satiated as he sighs out a long happy moan. It unhinges Sebastian completely, and he wraps himself tight around Kurt, begins to fuck him in earnest now, chasing after his own climax. There’s still an air of languor around it all, it’s not a frenzied race to the finish, not a desperate climb to the top. It’s simply the two of them, simply a moment for Sebastian to get lost in.

He comes when Kurt’s fingers reach up to cover his and grip tight, holding the two of them together while Sebastian falls apart.

“ _Kurt?”_

“ _Mm?”_

“ _What’s with the ring?”_

_The question lands between them with a thud. Sebastian almost regrets it. They’d had what was just about a perfect day, fun and sexy and adventurous, and he had to go ask it, had to give voice to the curiosity that was always hanging over their heads._

_Well, pillow talk never had been one of his strong points._

_Kurt’s eyes darken and he casts his glance down, eyelashes fanning out over his cheeks. “We weren’t married. If that’s what you were asking. Almost, but didn’t quite get there.”_

“ _Almost.” Sebastian curls his hand up under his head, full of prying questions he only just holds back. “Engaged?”_

_It’s long moments before Kurt answers, and it’s not really an answer. “He promised me always, once.”_

“ _What happened?” It’s out before he can stop it._

_Kurt shrugs and rolls over onto his other side, facing away. “I guess always has a time limit.”_

_Sebastian watches him breathe, watches the rise and fall of his shoulders until it slows down and evens out, until the breaths are long and even and Kurt is asleep at last. Only then – ignoring the quiet little protesting voice that’s telling him he’s breaking more of his own rules - does he carefully slip over and wrap himself around this unlikely lover, holding Kurt close until he feels his own eyelids droop and close._

_He doesn’t realize until morning that Kurt didn’t put the necklace back on this time._

_They decide to stay in Barcelona for a few days just because, and choose the next city together, just this once._

_ _


	5. Breathing In Fumes I Taste When We Kiss

“ _You know, the guidebooks always say to not make this the first place you visit when you get here.” Wide-eyed with astonishment, Kurt glances around the street, at the bustling crowds gawking at storefront windows, at the women posing in the windows, at bicycles and boats and city lights. “Shouldn’t we be going to see the windmills or tulip fields or dikes?”_

  
“ _Lesbians are not a tourist attraction, Hummel,” Sebastian chastises playfully as he dodges Kurt’s backhanded swat to his arm. “Okay, sorry. That was terrible and uncalled for, you’re right.” Hitching his carry-on further up onto his shoulder, he waves a hand at the street. “Anyway, we’re not here to sight-see, we’re here to check into our hotel.”_

_Kurt manages to confine his reaction to a single raised eyebrow. “Come again?”_

“ _Are you offer – no. No, sorry again. Hotel? Place in which to sleep and shower and, assuming I haven’t screwed my chances with bad jokes, fuck?” He points to a row of slender buildings all linked together. “Third door down, that’s where we’re staying.”_

_It’s taking some time for Kurt to wrap his head around what Sebastian is telling him.“You booked us a hotel room in the red light district?”_

“ _No, Vivian booked us a hotel room in the red light district,” Sebastian counters, raising a finger to punctuate his point. “If you want to get technical.”_

Sebastian shoves himself up to sitting, wrapping one arm around Kurt’s waist and pushing the other through his hair, tangling them tightly together with gazes still locked and cautious. It’s a charged moment, electricity a tangible crackle in the air before Kurt’s hands pause in their slow journey up Sebastian’s abdomen, curling into fists full of t-shirt.

The better to pull his lover into a kiss with, of course.

Tongue on tongue, slip and slide and probe, flick and taste and touch. Kurt opens one hand to lay flat over Sebastian’s ribs, then curls it shut again, being sure to scrape his fingernails through the shirt over Sebastian’s skin. A groan rides on a hot breath from Sebastian’s throat into Kurt’s mouth, and Kurt swallows it down with a smile, sinks his teeth into Sebastian’s lip and pulls, just a little bit, just enough.

Holding his breath when he pulls back from Sebastian’s lips, Kurt begins to unbutton his shirt with fingers that are less than steady and still. He keeps his eyes on Sebastian’s face, watching tension and anger begin to melt away as desire takes hold, doesn’t look at the hands that are sliding up and down his thighs.

He stops with his shirt half undone, hand still on the next button. “I’m sorry,” he says, not for the first time that night.

Sebastian’s hand comes to cover his, pushes the button through the hole. “Don’t worry about it.”

 _The argument is only mostly true. Actually what had happened is that Kurt had called Vivian once they decided to head for the Netherlands, and Sebastian had snatched the phone out of his hand with the explanation, “She’s giving you shit, I_ absolutely _want to talk to any other human on earth that can get away with that.”_

_Kurt had ended up spending the next thirty minutes despairing over his phone bill and watching Sebastian pace their hotel room in Barcelona, phone tucked under his ear. Despair had fallen by the wayside fairly quickly in favor of fascination, Kurt reclining on their bed memorizing each expression, each shift of Sebastian’s shoulders, the mindless twisting of a Rubik’s Cube - of all things - in his long fingers. He was so unexpectedly mercurial and absorbing just to watch…_

_And now Kurt is being presented with lodgings in De Wallen and Sebastian is taking no responsibility for it. Like it’s Kurt’s fault Sebastian has ended up being so sexy and interesting and – wait, he’s getting sidetracked._

_Kurt slides Sebastian a sidelong glance that can and has withered lesser men, but Sebastian, as ever, fails to back down, waiting with hands in pockets, rocking cheerfully on his feet. At last, rolling his eyes, Kurt gives in. “Are you actually using semantic arguments against me?”_

“ _I did spend the last few years of my life in law school,” comes the reminder. “I had to get something out of it.”_

_He looks at the women in the windows again, women of all shapes and sizes in a truly mind-boggling array of underwear of all qualities and colors. The red lights have gone on, bathing the street and tourists in a garish roseate glow. “We’re gay,” he points out, making sure his voice is as dry as a cracker. “Not sure we’re their target clientele.”_ ****  
  
_“It’_ _s fun and interesting and a great story to tell your kids one day,” is Sebastian’s breezy reply._

_Kurt prides himself on a certain equipoise and maturity, having discarded his wide-eyed Ohio boy wonder within months of moving to New York. He feels very much a man of the world, very liberal, it’s not the prostitution he’s having a problem with._

“ _It just seems so tacky,” he finally sighs._

_Sebastian regards him with amusement for a moment before snatching away Kurt’s suitcase and heading for their hotel. “You’ll live,” he calls over his shoulder as he lopes away._

_Huh._

_Blaine would have at least tried to coax and cajole Kurt into going along with it._

_Kurt can’t decide if he’s annoyed or even more interested or annoyed_ because _he’s even more interested._

They’ve discovered over the last weeks that they both have a thing for nipple play; Kurt for the gentle stroke of fingers and thumbs across his chest until every muscle and inch of skin feels stretched tight as a drum, Sebastian for the scrape of Kurt’s nails or pinch of his fingertips, sharp little twists of pain that zing and echo through his body.

Since Kurt’s decided to take the lead tonight, he’s alternating scrapes and scratches with kisses, licks of his tongue over the faint red stripes he leaves behind. Beneath him, Sebastian twists and squirms, shuddery breaths and sighs shaking his body. His erection is hot even through his jeans, pressed hard against Kurt’s stomach, each helpless roll of Sebastian’s hips feeling like a brand pushing into his skin.

If Kurt bites down while he’s running his nails along tanned abdomen, he earns himself a thready hiss and fingers tangled into his hair, pulling sweet aches into his scalp and neck that make him gasp against warm, flushed skin.

Faded denim is slung low on Sebastian’s hips, the arcs of his hipbones peeking just above the waistband. It’s the work of an instant to slither the leather strip of his belt out of the loops and discard it, two seconds to unbutton the top few buttons of his fly, and just under a minute for Kurt to hook his fingers around the waistband and pull down, leaving Sebastian completely naked.

Kurt wears loose trousers of cotton or linen for travel, Sebastian loose button fly jeans, and for the trip to the Netherlands neither one of them wore any kind of underwear whatsoever because they’re not idiots.

It’s almost too bad they’re going to be getting back to their tease and chase game when they’re done in Amsterdam. That thing in the tiny bathroom on the way here had been a surprising amount of fun.

Who knew Sebastian was so flexible?

“ _I was thinking we’d stay in tonight.” With a noisy slam, Sebastian shuts the drawer he just unloaded his suitcase into and turns around, leaning back against the tiny dresser. “Like, go get dinner but then come back here.”_

_Kurt stops in his tracks, still holding a neatly folded pair of trousers slung over a hanger, and his face creases into a frown. “Why? It’s not too late to go to the Rijksmuseum. Or we can go take a canal tour.”_

“ _Jet lag?” The hopeful look on Sebastian’s face will always give him away when he’s scheming. It’s almost cute. Sad how fast Kurt picked up on that, but cute. “Aren’t you tired?”_

“ _Barcelona to Amsterdam isn’t a long enough trip to be jet lagged.” Casting a knowing glance across the room, Kurt resumes his unpacking, actually multitasking – as he bends and stoops to pull things out of his bag, he’s stretching out the kinks that travel has knotted into his spine. Maybe yoga tomorrow, if he can locate a studio. He straightens up and frowns again. “And we took the train, anyway.”_

_When he bends down again, Sebastian slips up behind him and grabs his hips, snugging Kurt’s ass against the fly of his jeans. “We’re here for three days. You can’t give me one night?”_

“ _I give you_ every _night, Sebastian. And a good chunk of the days.” With a deft twist that makes his spine pop all the way up – ah, sweet relief - Kurt turns and stands, in the next instant pushing Sebastian up against the wall, running the tip of his finger along the mouth he so enjoys kissing. “What are you planning? Hm?”_

“ _Me? Nothing.” But Sebastian has more than one tell, more than one look or gesture that Kurt has cataloged over these last weeks, and there’s the head-tilt and half-smirk that Kurt was waiting for. “What? Oh, come on. Don’t you trust me?”_

_Kurt scoffs. “Not in the least.” He lets his other hand drift south and tug at Sebastian’s belt, dipping his fingers just inside the waistband of Sebastian’s jeans to stroke at the lean, flat stretch of skin there. “So? Are you going to tell me, or…do I have to persuade it out of you?”_

“ _Well, if there’s a choice…” Eyes darkening, Sebastian lets his head drop back against the wall as Kurt falls to his knees. “I…mm…I really like your…nnnh…methods of persuasion…”_

Kurt does not get to spend enough time with Sebastian’s cock.

He doesn’t want to complain, exactly, because the reason he doesn’t get to give Sebastian head very often is because Sebastian likes to give  _him_  head. Likes to do it, and is good at it, so who is Kurt to discourage the display of such a remarkable talent and generosity?

Still, he’s getting in his licks – as it were – and things are becoming a lot more equitable. Instance now, for example, when Kurt’s stretched out flat on the hotel carpet, pillowing his cheek on the curve of Sebastian’s hipbone. Sebastian has a hand stroking through Kurt’s hair while he licks and mouths at the shaft of the cock he’s facing, paying it attention and tribute and teasing the everloving fuck out of Sebastian while he’s at it.

“Kurt,” Sebastian groans, and when Kurt flicks his gaze upward, he sees Sebastian pressing his lips together, tormented breaths inhaled sharply into his nose. “Please.”

“Please, what?” Kurt grips the straining erection lightly in his hand, running his thumb all around the head. “Hmm?”

“Please, you giant asshole, will you suck my fucking cock already?”

“Well.” Kurt nudges himself up a little so he can reach better. “Since you asked so nicely.”

“ _I thought this was illegal.” Kurt is fascinated by the deft movements of Sebastian’s fingers, how sure they seem as they move from the improvised tray made from tinfoil to sprinkle green flakes of marijuana into the thin sheet of cigarette paper held lightly in his other hand. Clearly, Sebastian is no stranger to the art of rolling a joint. Kurt wonders how long he’s been doing this. “It is, isn’t it?”_

_  
Sebastian’s concentration is keen as he eyes how much he’s got in the paper before adding a little more and beginning to carefully roll. “It was for tourists, for a while,” he murmurs absently, pressing his fingers along the forming tube. “That didn’t last long, caused more problems than it solved, just like it does back home.”_

“ _Ah.” Kurt’s only tried pot once or twice, stuff supplied by Puck that made him cough and gave him a headache. It wasn’t his most favorite of experiences. “So this is why you wanted to stay in? Smoking up in a hotel in the red light district? Are you determined to turn our trip here into a complete cliché?”_

“ _Oh, because I was the one talking about windmills and tulip fields earlier.” With a smooth lick of his long tongue, Sebastian seals the joint and twists one end of it, offering it to Kurt with a wry smile. “My cliché tonight, yours tomorrow. Deal?”_

He doesn’t, of course, not immediately.

Kurt uses both hands to hold Sebastian’s hips pressed down hard to the floor, and he laughs at the stream of curses being rained down on his head while he continues his licking, teasing exploration. Sebastian is continually rendered helpless by Kurt’s fingernails etching fiery red lines into the delicate skin of his abdomen, toes curling with each electric shock of pleasure.

“This is…ugh…this is why I don’t let you…” He strains up hard, tries to align his cock and Kurt’s mouth in a vain effort to make the teasing stop.

Twisting his head away, Kurt kisses a playful trail from the head of Sebastian’s dick to the base, flicking his tongue out here, sucking a harder kiss there. “What’s why?”

“Your…Jesus  _fuck_ …” Every muscle in Sebastian’s body that Kurt can feel tenses when he sucks one of Sebastian’s testicles right into his mouth and begins to massage it with his tongue. “Your fucking  _sadistic_  streak.”

“ _…I hope this carpet is clean.” Kurt lets out a low laugh as they lay on the floor, heads touching and staring at the ceiling. “Oh my god, I’m going to have to shampoo twice tonight aren’t I?”_

“ _This is something you actually care about right now? You’re terrible at being high.” Sebastian rolls his head to the side to meet Kurt’s laughing gaze, and lets out a laugh of his own. “Wow. That was only one joint and you’re already kind of baked. Eh. Well, I did get some pretty decent stuff. Organic.” He smirks. “I thought you’d appreciate that.”_

“ _Organic marijuana.” The idea of it makes him laugh, like you can pick it up at Trader Joe’s next to the bananas and mangoes. Ooh, he’s hungry. “I want food, but I don’t wanna go back out.”_

_Sebastian shifts a shoulder up in a vague semblance of a shrug, still smiling. “Okay, whatever you want.”_

_He has an idea. “I want you to distract me from my growling, shrinking, starving stomach.” Kurt rolls over until he’s rolled right on top of a surprised Sebastian, straddling his hips and gracing him with a lazy smile. “Truth or dare?”_

“ _What?” With another, more incredulous laugh, Sebastian lets Kurt catch his hands together over his head and pin them there. “You want to play a game? This is what you want?”_

“ _Yeah!” Kurt’s nodding enthusiastically, ignoring how it makes his head swim a little. “Come on, truth or dare, play with me. It’ll be fun.”_

_Sebastian shakes his head. “I’m guessing I don’t have much choice in the matter?”_

“ _You have two choices!” If he weren’t so busy holding Sebastian down, he’d pat himself on the back for that one. “Go on, pick.”_

“ _Well…” When Sebastian heaves a sigh, clearly pretending to give the matter serious consideration, he shifts his hips up to let his cock grind against Kurt. It’s a blatant effort at distraction, and it doesn’t work. Kurt simply waits until Sebastian says, “Oh, all right. I think we both know there’s no dare I won’t take, so why don’t we skip the part where I’m arrested by Dutch policemen and I go for truth?”_

_Works for Kurt. Except for the part where he hasn’t thought of a question to ask. He actually was prepared to dare Sebastian to go streaking through the neighborhood._

_Tilting his head back, Kurt racks his brain. There’s got to be something he wants to know, right? It seems like he should have a thousand questions, anything from ‘when did you lose your virginity’ to ‘what the fuck was up with that rock salt slushie?’_

_But in the end, what’s dredged up from the pot-fogged depths of his mind is, “Why haven’t you taken the bar?”_

“Get back up here.”

Kurt glances up from where he’s mouthing at Sebastian’s balls, puzzled. “Hm?”

“C’mon, please, I want…” His fingers knead at Kurt’s scalp, pulling gently to try and guide him up. “Please, come up.”

“But I’m having fun.” With an exaggerated pout, Kurt lets the flat of his tongue drag from Sebastian’s balls to the tip of his cock, licking up sticky pre-come and sighing cool air over the damp skin in a way that makes the fingers in his hair knot even tighter.

“Babe, come on, you can keep doing that in a sec, just get your ass up here, Jesus Christ.” It all tumbles out of Sebastian’s mouth in a barely-coherent groan, accompanied by more insistent pulls. “Come on, Kurt,  _God_.”

“Fine.” He crawls up Sebastian’s body until he’s bracing himself over him and staring down, rolling his hips down so his cock slips against Sebastian’s. “Here I am, what do you want?”

“Up.” Sebastian grabs him by the waist and rolls them both over and then up until they’re sitting again, tangled around each other and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. “OK. Hold on.”

“Ugh, we were having fun, you interrupted a perfectly good blowjob…what are you doing?” Pushing a sweaty lock of hair out of his eyes, Kurt huffs indignantly to see Sebastian reaching for the tray and papers again. “More?”

“I want to show you something.” His fingers move through the now familiar dance of packing, squeezing, rolling, sealing and twisting. “I love doing this.”

“What’s this?”

With a wink, Sebastian lights up the joint and inhales deeply, sucking in as big a lungful of smoke as he can manage. He holds it for a long, long moment, eyes closed and lips sealed tightly shut. Then -

“This,” is all he croaks out on a thin whisper, a puff of grassy smoke all that escapes before he seals his mouth over Kurt’s and exhales.

_Sebastian’s face shutters over. “No.”_

_Kurt pays him no attention. “No, wait, I actually do want to know that. That’s so bizarre, I mean you’ve spent the last eight years in college and law school but now you’re running around Europe like it’s no big deal that you’re not doing anything with your education. Why would you do that?” He finds the thought so puzzling, he hardly even notices when Sebastian pulls his hands free and rolls out from under him, picking up the marijuana and beginning to roll another joint. “What was the point?”_

“ _I’m not answering this.” Even as Sebastian’s hands are sure and automatic in their movements, Kurt can see them shaking with the anger that mottles his cheeks a dark red. “Pick another question. Or hey, let’s fucking drop this game and go to bed, I’m tired all of a sudden.”_

_But Kurt, for better or worse, has been tempered by the constant roadblocks and rejections in his life, and he doesn’t back down so easily. Besides, now he’s really curious. “Mmm…no, now I want to know even more than I did five minutes ago.”_

“ _Drop it.” Sebastian fires up the end of the new joint without even offering it to Kurt and takes a long hit._

“ _No.” Almost definitely a stupid decision at this point, but Kurt stands his ground._

_Sebastian’s eyes narrow, a small muscle in his jaw twitching as he grinds his teeth. At last, he exhales a long puff of sweet smoke out of his mouth. “Quid pro quo,” he finally says._

“ _Hm?”_

“ _I’ll answer this, and then it’s your turn.”_

Kurt gasps and sucks down the smoke being forced into his lungs by reflex, pulling away with eyes gone wide in surprise. Sebastian is only smiling his little enigmatic smile as he prepares to take another hit of his own, watching Kurt carefully. “Exhale,” he says in reminder just before he raises the joint to his lips and sucks more in.

By the time his lungs are empty, Sebastian’s exhaled his own hit and is pulling another in. “Again,” he breathes, reaching for Kurt.

Kurt is floating again after the third hit, all relaxed and boneless and happy. “K, lemme have you again,” he insists, taking the joint from Sebastian and putting it out before tipping his lover back over onto the carpet. “Wasn’t done.”

“Nah, wait, c’mere.” Sebastian sits up a little, enough to tug at Kurt’s legs. “Flip around.”

“ _I got busted my senior year at UPenn.” Sebastian has smoked almost the entire joint by himself; it’s down to its last drag when Kurt plucks it from his fingers. “The freshman I was selling the fake ID to…well.”_

“ _Not a freshman?” The end of the joint is so tiny, Kurt narrowly misses burning his fingers and lips when he inhales. The smoke at the end is a little rough, and he doesn’t hold the hit for long before he coughs it out. When he can breathe again, he blinks tears away and focuses on Sebastian again. “Whoops?”_

“ _No, I wouldn’t term a felony offense as ‘whoops’.” Leaning over, Sebastian takes the dead end back and stubs it into the ashtray. “More of an ‘oh fuck’.”_

“ _But you got out of it, right?” What Kurt knows about law schools could fill an acorn on a good day, but he’s pretty sure none of them would look too kindly on that sort of thing, let alone an Ivy League school. And even high, he can manage to put two and two together: Sebastian graduated from Harvard, so he must have gotten out of it._

“ _Yeah, sure. And it only cost me the rest of my life.” Bitterness is thick in Sebastian’s voice, sharp like a swallow of Campari. “Dad to the rescue, of course. Pull a few strings with some friends and presto, charges all gone, record wiped clean, and I’m taking the LSAT before I really even know what’s going on.”_

_Kurt is going to have to do some serious skin care to make up for all the frowning he’s done just tonight. “I don’t understand. How did getting arrested get you sent to law school? And why are you here instead?”_

“ _You don’t get it?” Sitting up straighter, Sebastian snorts and hangs his arms over his knees, idly rubbing his wrists like he’s wearing handcuffs that never got taken off. “That was Dad’s price for getting me off. Go to law school and then come work for him where he can keep me under his thumb. For the rest of my life.” He slips an ironic glare over at Kurt, and his smirk is the least playful Kurt’s seen it since this whole thing started. “But hey, if I don’t take the bar, I can’t be a lawyer, right?”_

It’s so distracting, this position.

But, oh, God, Kurt does not want it to stop.

Every time he hits exactly the right sucking rhythm on Sebastian’s cock, it makes Sebastian groan, and the vibrations from that are like an extra massage on  _Kurt’s_  cock, which pulls a responding desperate moan from his mouth, and it’s a sort of infinite pleasure loop of sighs and sucking and vibrations and, oh, oh  _God_  it needs to never stop, ever.

It’s everything Kurt can do to concentrate on licks and sucks, on dragging the tip of his tongue along hot skin, on pulling his lips wetly up the thick shaft before he opens wide and dives back down to take as much of Sebastian into his mouth as he can. The buck and strain of Sebastian’s hips is growing increasingly insistent, each upward push saying as clearly as if he’d spoken the words aloud –  _so close, so close, so close_.

And Sebastian’s mouth is almost mirroring the movements of Kurt’s, each stroke so closely duplicated that it leaves Kurt with the oddly hot impression of almost blowing himself.  _Damn, I’m good_ , he thinks, with an excusable touch of narcissistic pride – and then a gasp when Sebastian relaxes a little to let Kurt’s cock slide into the tight heat of his throat.

He goes nearly blind and deaf with the pleasure of it and almost misses the tiny click of the lube bottle’s cap being popped open.

“ _The big irony, of course, is that I ended up actually liking law school.”_

_Sebastian is lying on his back again, eyes fixed on the ceiling, long fingers drumming on his stomach as he speaks. “It turned out I was good at it. Go figure. All that learning, memorizing, hunting down precedents, and arguing - the Socratic method was basically made for me. Best three years of my life.” His eyes squeeze shut and his cheeks flush with anger again. “And I can’t do anything with it.”_

_Whatever Kurt was expecting when he’d asked his question, it hadn’t been this. His heart and stomach knot unpleasantly to see how unhappy this had made Sebastian, how he’s stirred up the murky waters of something so painful. “There must be something you can do,” he whispers softly, hopefully, wanting so much to fix his gaffe._

_The confusion of why he cares so much is best left unexamined, really._

“ _The statute of limitations is out so he can’t have the charges reinstated And legally he can’t force me to work for him.” His voice is flat, affectless, as if he’s simply reading some dusty law text. “But personally? He can still ruin me, he can disown me, he can make my life a living hell if I don’t join the firm of his choice and then work my way up to the State Attorney’s office._

“ _I was in Paris to buy myself time to get out of it. My father and I are officially in a waiting game to see who blinks first. He won’t come after me, he’ll just wait for me to run out of money and go back home. And since I haven’t been able to muster up the balls to tell him to fuck off, that’s what’s going to happen.” He sighs, so long and heavy with defeat, and right then he looks like a memory Kurt holds of a teenage boy in a coffee shop, sitting in front of himself and Blaine and Santana and Brittany with none of his usual walls up, swallowing hard before he says_ It’s all fun and games…until it’s not _._

_Words are not enough, so Kurt crawls across the floor and straddles Sebastian again, hoping the apology in his eyes is clear as he strokes his thumbs across high cheekbones dusted with freckles, but just in case he adds, “I’m sorry,” in a sympathy-laced murmur before he dips down for a kiss thick with the promise of repentance and contrition._

Kurt knows he’s playing dirty when he flexes his fingers and scrapes his nails along Sebastian’s thighs, but goddamn, one of them has to come soon or they’re liable to set the hotel room on fire.

He’s flat out fucking himself down into Sebastian’s throat now, almost whimpering with the need for release. The pot has his sense of time fogged and dilated, he doesn’t know if they’ve been at this for hours or mere minutes, knows only the world of wet heat around his cock, of slick fingers relentlessly stroking inside of him, of -

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Kurt breathes, so close, so fucking close, he can’t concentrate any more on Sebastian. He has to pull his mouth away, leaves just his hand to pull and stroke at Sebastian’s cock as he throws his head back, his desperate panting gasps clouding the air. He wants to come, wants it so bad, needs it so bad,  _so close so close so please oh god close need it want it please let me oh god_ and then thank every deity he has never believed in, he’s there, gasps giving way to obscene shouts he doesn’t even try to muffle as Sebastian grips tight with his free hand and swallows it all down.

Dimly, Kurt realizes Sebastian’s coming too, feels the streaks of heat splashing and sticking on his neck and chest, and he smiles because  _yes, oh, yes_.

It lasts for a blissful, electric eternity, the shocks and quakes rocking them until they slump apart, sprawled out on the floor, heavy sighs of breath the only sound in the room, the bustle and shouts of De Wallen filling the air outside of it. Kurt fumbles his hand around until he locates Sebastian’s leg and he drapes it there limply, the touch an anchor.

“Apology accepted,” comes the drowsy mumble from the vicinity of his feet.

_When he departs Amsterdam, sadly alone, Kurt locates and sends a photo -_

_  
And when he lands, the only message waiting for him is -_

_Don’t think I’ve forgotten that it’s your turn in truth or dare._


	6. There's A Heartbeat In The Wire

_Lightning cracks across the sky, illuminating a quiet hotel room that overlooks the roiling sea._

_A suitcase is touched by the light first, revealing it to still be mostly packed, the few articles of clothing removed from it draped carelessly across the chair on which it sits. As if its owner had lost interest in unpacking and wandered off._

_The television in the room is on, but muted, speechless newscasters narrating video footage of the freak storm that has risen seemingly out of nowhere to engulf and isolate this small jut of land at the base of Spain. No storm like this had been seen in almost a decade, they had said earlier. All flights into and out of the tiny airport had been grounded indefinitely, the port closed to any ships that were fool enough to try to sail in._

_A second streak of lightning flashes across the sky, illuminating a bottle of Rioja sitting uncorked and half-empty on the bedside table. A glass sits nearby, a tiny red puddle all that is left of the wine that had once filled it, as if whoever had poured it had been possessed of a deep need to drink._

_On the same table, a platinum band threaded onto a silver chain sits piled next to an iPhone that is silent and dark. But to skim a thumb across its screen would reveal a single message left unread, as if its recipient had been too overwhelmed by the disappointment of the preceding messages to read this one before he set the phone down and opened the wine._

_Message From Sebastian: I’m sorry, Kurt. I tried._

_Alone in the large bed, Kurt Hummel sleeps as the storm of the decade, if not the century, batters the peninsula and rages around the hotel._

_Even in dreams, his face is creased with a frown and darkened with disappointment._

Sebastian picks up the phone on the first ring, a little startled. “Hey.”  
  
“Hey.” Kurt’s voice is wide awake and playful on the other end of the line. “I couldn’t sleep either.”

“Mm. Too noisy outside?”

“Not really. I find wind and thunder to be soothing, actually.” A clink of glass on glass, a gentle sipping sound. “So, what are you wearing?”

_It’s still dark out when wakefulness drags Kurt out of the uneasy depths of his restless sleep. He rubs gently at his eyes, grimacing at how gritty they feel. Clearly he hasn’t slept enough, and a check of the bedside clock confirms this, red numbers steadily proclaiming it to be 3:00 AM._

_The other side of the bed is still empty, not that he expected anything different. Even if he hadn’t demanded that Sebastian not rent a car and drive in, even if Sebastian had done so anyway – and Kurt wouldn’t have been surprised in the least at that – he probably wouldn’t have gotten here yet. When they’d last spoken, Sebastian had still been racing to catch his freshly booked flight from Amsterdam into Madrid. And then from there he’d have to haul ass to grab his flight into Málaga, and then it was another almost two hours to drive from there to Gibraltar in good conditions._

_Outside, the storm hasn’t really abated at all. He can still hear thunder booming threateningly, and good conditions seem like they could be days and days away. Kurt slips out from beneath the sheet that covers him and pads across the carpet to the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony._

_When he steps outside into the downpour, he’s soaked to the skin in seconds._

Caught in the middle of taking a swallow of the beer he’d opened, Sebastian nearly chokes. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Kurt’s voice drops, low and dark, an undercurrent of amusement rippling through it like water. “I’m asking what you have on, right now, at this moment.”

“Ah…” It’s not often that anyone can catch Sebastian off guard, but Kurt seems to have had a knack for it from the moment they met. And Sebastian has always, always felt like he’s playing catch up – he’s good at covering up his scrambling, but he knows it’s there. The good news is that these days, verbally sparring with Kurt Hummel is fun, and more than a little sexy. “Not a damn thing, as it happens, why do you ask?”

Like he doesn’t know where this is going.

“I think you can figure out why.”

Sebastian sets his beer aside and slumps down into the armchair he’s occupying, slinging a leg over one of its arms and reaching for his rapidly filling cock. “Well, then. Fair’s fair. What are you wearing?”

“Disappointing. I was hoping you’d ask me what I’m  _doing._ ”

_The thing is – and this came as a surprise – Kurt is having trouble sleeping for the first time since this whole thing really started._

_Two years plus he can’t sleep soundly for more than two hours at a stretch. Two years of waking up no matter what his doctor prescribes, no matter how expensive the white noise machine, no matter how perfect the temperature in any bedroom nor how comfortable the bed. Without Blaine, Kurt hadn’t been able to sleep._

_Until Copenhagen._

_In Copenhagen, he’d been startled to wake up after four hours. That was a record, one swiftly broken in Barcelona when he slept for six and then was able to get back down for two more after waking Sebastian up with a handjob and getting himself fucked back to sleep._

_In Amsterdam, he’d gotten a full night’s sleep every night and their room had been facing De Wallen, he should have been up and complaining the entire time. Instead he’d slept like a baby. As if he were asleep next to Blaine._

_But Sebastian isn’t Blaine. Far from. He’s cocksure and arrogant, frequently thoughtless and he snores. The annoying kind of snore that’s barely a snore, but you know it’s there, it’s always hovering just on the edges of your hearing._

_And Kurt still sleeps through it. He can’t sleep when there’s silence, can’t sleep when there’s the occasional stranger in his bed, but next to Blaine and now next to Sebastian, he can sleep._

_He’s been avoiding thinking about this, but now, wide awake and alone, he has nothing else to do but think about it. And he has no idea what to think of it._

_A sigh rocks his body from top to toe, and he closes his eyes, tipping his head back up into the moonlight and rain. Cool water sluices down his face and body, runs chilled rivulets through his hair even as he runs his fingers through it. Kurt stands like this, hands knotted into his hair, face tilted to the dark clouds and veiled moon, until he’s freezing cold and still can’t follow the trail of his thoughts to a satisfactory conclusion._

Sebastian’s mouth has gone entirely dry, it’s an effort to get the words out. “Tell me.”

God, Kurt’s sexy, playful chuckle makes Sebastian want to pin him against a wall and fuck him senseless. “Well. I’ve got this five star bed all to myself…and it’s  _huge_.” A hum of pleasure slips down the line, it sounds like he’s stretching – Sebastian pictures him, all arms and legs and teasing smile sprawled across a king size bed with nothing on and oh  _God_  - “Which,” Kurt goes on, sighing, “is a shame, since I booked this hotel specifically so I could have the choice to fuck you on either this amazing bed, or the balcony overlooking the Bay of Gibraltar.”

“The balcony?” Oh, Sebastian is hard as a goddamn rock by now. “You wanted -”

“I went out there earlier. Before I called you.” Kurt still hasn’t said what he’s doing, but Sebastian isn’t sure he needs to, he can hear the hitches in Kurt’s voice, lazy little catches and sighs, it’s easy to imagine him with a hand wrapped around that  _gorgeous_  cock, pulling in a rhythm Sebastian knows intimately and is echoing with his own hand, his own cock. “I was wet to the skin the second I got outside. I’m going to have to send my pajama pants down to the laundry tomorrow.”

The mundane detail doesn’t do a damn thing to distract Sebastian from the mental image of Kurt out in the storm, bathed in moonlight and pouring rain, his charcoal colored sleep pants soaked through and clinging to his perfect ass like a second skin, plastered down to his legs, outlining his cock. And there is no way Kurt doesn’t know what this is doing to Sebastian, no way he can miss the gutteral moan that growls out of Sebastian’s throat as he begins to stroke faster. “You’re an asshole, Kurt.”

“Really? Just for that?” Hand in hand with the amusement comes a new breathless quality to Kurt’s voice. “I can do better.”

Oh, sweet fucking Christ. “Tell me.”

“You’re on speakerphone, Sebastian. It’s the only way I could jerk off and fuck myself at the same time.”

_When lightning whips across the sky again, it illuminates a trail of soaking wet pajama pants, boxer briefs, and several towels dropped carelessly on the floor. The ozone smell of the storm drifts into the room through the storm screens on the open windows to mingle with the sandalwood scent and steam that fills the air from Kurt’s shower._

_Message From Kurt: It’s okay. Not your fault Mother Nature’s got a case of PMS that rivals Rachel Berry’s. Where are you?_

_Kurt himself is propped up against the headboard of the bed, phone in one hand as the fingers of the other idly toy with the silver chain he’s picked up from the bedside table. He’s not really expecting a response to his text message, it’s almost five in the morning now…but still, he hopes._

_Message From Sebastian: I finally got to Málaga but can’t get a flight to you, and I was dumb enough to promise you I wouldn’t drive._

_Message From Kurt: Excuse me if I didn’t want you skidding off the road and dying in a horrible car accident on a treacherous road during a storm._

_Message From Sebastian: Oh, whatever, I’m a good driver._

_Message From Sebastian: And I’m still going to make it up to you. Meet me here day after tomorrow, if you can get out?_

_Picture Message From Sebastian:_

_Message From Kurt: I’ll think about it._

_Message From Kurt: I wasn’t expecting you to still be awake._

_Message From Sebastian: I couldn’t sleep._

_Breath catches and stills in Kurt’s lungs, and all he can do is blink owlishly at his phone, a tiny, silly smile beginning to tug at his lips._

_And he has an idea._

It surprises Sebastian to find out he can come just to the sound of Kurt fucking himself, to just the groaning and soft whispered profanities slipping down the line. To the mental image of Kurt pushed up against a headboard, legs spread wide and knees pulled up so that he can push his long, graceful fingers up inside himself while he bites his lip and slips his hand along his hard cock.

He vows to actually be there watching the next time that happens.

Sebastian doesn’t even try to hold back his noisy groan when the familiar, welcome sound of Kurt’s orgasm tips him over the edge. The delicious ache as he arches his hips up and fucks his dick into the tight circle of his fist is his favorite sensation, right behind the feeling of coming down Kurt’s throat. Since he can’t have that, he falls into the sound of Kurt’s voice, of  _fuck, yes, fuck, wish it…wish it was you…_

It takes all his strength to crawl out of the chair and fall into his bed, entirely deflated and boneless. 80 miles of rainy Mediterranean coastline away – so close, yet so far - Kurt’s breathing is ragged as he comes down; he sounds so wrung out that it’s easy to picture him grabbing a handful of tissues to clean up and then just rolling over, cocooned in his blankets. “Why, Kurt Hummel, I think you just used me for masturbation nap fodder.”

“Whatever, you like it when I use you,” is the snarky, drowsy reply.

Sebastian laughs and shakes his head, feeling sleepy himself. “Not denying it, just calling you out on it.”

“Mmph.” It sounds like Kurt is winding himself even more tightly into his blanket ball. Groping around, Sebastian drags the sheet over his legs and yawns, curling his arm up behind his head. Just as he’s wondering if Kurt’s actually dropped off - “Sebastian?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t hang up.”

He’d laugh…

…but he was about to say the same thing.

Sebastian falls asleep to the sound of Kurt’s breathing, two hours and a violent storm away.


	7. I Feel Warm If You Want Me To

_Message From Sebastian: So. How long until you get here? I mean, I assume you’re on your way, that you figured it out._

_Message From Kurt: I’m in line to board my plane now. Please. Europe, canals instead of streets, beautiful ancient homes? Like I couldn’t have guessed that one._

_Message From Sebastian: Smartass. Don’t worry. Getting here isn’t the challenge._

_Message From Kurt: Do tell._

_Message From Sebastian: Where’s the challenge in that?_

Sebastian sleeps without dreaming, and awakens slowly, with a sigh.

They’d been tired and tense when they got back to their hotel room, and had fallen into bed without breaking the silence that had stretched between them for the last half hour.

Damn it. He’d known while he was arranging this leg of their adventure that it would inevitably lead to questions he wasn’t ready to answer, questions still too confusing for him to really pick apart in his head and too terrifying to examine too closely.

Yet he’d done it anyway, drunk on the rush of excitement at the prospect of seeing Kurt again, pleased by the idea of doing something special for him after two days of being apart. A wiser man would have thought more closely on why he was so pleased, so excited. Would have paused when Vivian had asked him, shades of hope coloring her voice, if there was something the two of them wanted to tell her.

But again, too terrifying, too much, too not ready, and he’d dismissed her questions and his own with a laugh.

_Message From Kurt: Damn it, Vivian won’t tell me where we’re staying._

_Message From Sebastian: She’s not supposed to. I told you getting into the city wasn’t the challenge._

_Message From Kurt: I would like to state for the record that I don’t like you being in cahoots with my travel agent._

_Message From Sebastian: Cahoots? Who says that? And you’re just mad that she won’t let you cheat. Suck it up, it’ll be worth it._

_Message From Kurt: I would love to know when you and she became BFFs._

_Message From Sebastian: The Gibraltar debacle. It was so cute, have you ever heard her call anyone a ‘bastard son of a bitching sheep-fucker’?_

_Message From Kurt: She called you that? What’d you do?_

_Message From Sebastian: Hell no, she loves me. It was the airline clerk she was yelling at. That reminds me, I don’t think we’re welcome to fly Iberia anymore._

Sleep knows no tension, so Kurt has gravitated as usual towards Sebastian, wrapping himself in a curve against Sebastian’s back, arms wrapped under his and around his chest, leg hitched over to link them together. Anyone else doing this would have found themselves quickly pushed back off, but Sebastian always leans into it, timing his breathing to Kurt’s until he doesn’t know whose breath is whose.

He does this every night.

It took not being around Kurt for two days to realize that something had shifted, he thinks maybe back as early as Barcelona. Or earlier. Sebastian has to admit nothing about this has been anything he’s used to, not even in Paris. Had it been, he’d never have gone to Prague.

Sebastian is not any kind of romantic and never has been. He’s never had any need or desire to be. And he’s quite certain that, at least, hasn’t changed. There is nothing really  _romantic_  about something with its roots in mutual antipathy and a smoking hot one night stand.

But he does acknowledge that it is possibly the only appropriate beginning there could have ever been between himself and Kurt Hummel.

_Message From Sebastian: You need to get here -_

_Picture Message From Sebastian:_

_Message From Kurt: That’s a church._

_Message From Sebastian: Nothing gets by you, does it?_

_Message From Kurt: A church is not a hotel, Sebastian._

_Message From Sebastian: I always knew my policy of only sleeping with smart people was the right way to go._

_Message From Sebastian: Okay, okay, I’ll stop, I can just imagine your face right now and I am too young and pretty to die._

_Message From Sebastian: But seriously. Get to that church._

_Message From Kurt: I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT CHURCH THAT IS._

_Message From Sebastian: Oh no, you’re going to have to ask directions from people you don’t know in a language you don’t speak, whatever will you do._

_Message From Sebastian: No really, please don’t kill me when you find me. I swear to God or whatever that this will be worth it._

But what was Paris the beginning  _of_? Sebastian feels like someone who didn’t realize the world was shaking beneath his feet until he’d already fallen to the ground. This wasn’t something that was supposed to happen.

Whatever  _this_  was.

His thoughts are circling endlessly, too quick to pin down. Not that he’s really making an effort to do so. His curiosity and worry aren’t strong enough yet for him to be up to focusing, though he knows he’ll have to sooner rather than later -

Keeping in line with everything else unexpected that’s been happening, the hand that suddenly encircles his cock is a surprise that sends his thoughts scattering to the winds.

_The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is a very pretty church, not as imposing as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona but certainly a lovely structure. Kurt is fairly certain he would appreciate it more had he not just endured multiple flights to get out of Gibraltar to Venice, then braved buses and water taxis to get here, all while hauling his bags with him._

_Not for the first time, he is grateful for his hard-won ability to travel relatively lightly._

_Also not for the first time, he is questioning his sanity for agreeing to keep playing this game with Sebastian. Figuring out what church this was had indeed involved talking to strangers, although thankfully they all spoke much better English than he did Italian – he was limited to being able to count to fifty and order dinner with a passable accent._

_But the water taxi ride had been beautiful, he admitted, taking him past gorgeous building after incredible structure, listening to the lyrical flow of chatter between the other occupants of the boat in a rainbow of languages. It had been more restful than a cab in a more conventional city, and despite the fact that it was summer, there was a breeze in the air that cooled them all off. It had actually been an enjoyable ride._

_Even the walk from the stop near the Basilica had been picturesque, but now Kurt is very tired and just wants to rest. He checks his phone._

_Message From Sebastian: If you’re facing the church, turn around and cross the bridge. Turn left._

_Heaving a heavy sigh, Kurt does, pausing to snap a photo when he reaches the other side._

_Picture Message From Kurt:_

_Message From Less Cute Than He Thinks He Is: Nice, but keep going until you see this -_

_Picture Message From Less Cute Than He Thinks He Is:_

_Message From Less Cute Than He Thinks He Is: And follow the right turn._

_Message From Kurt: Is the hotel in there somewhere?_

_Message From Less Cute Than He Thinks He Is: Just keep walking._

_Message From Kurt: Seriously, you can’t just tell me?_

_Message From Less Cute Than He Thinks He Is: You’re almost there. So close._

_There is nothing to do but to walk on. Hitching his shoulder bag up, he sighs again and keeps moving._

“You were thinking so loud it woke me up,” comes the sleepy mumble into Sebastian’s ear, followed by a tiny, slow lick at the lobe. “Want to talk about it?”

Sebastian shakes his head, breathing sharply in as the hand on his cock begins to move. “No,” he croaks out, dropping his head back against Kurt’s shoulder.

With a noise that sounds suspiciously like a purr, Kurt presses even closer, the bulk of his erect cock nudging into the cleft of Sebastian’s ass. “Good.”

_Kurt trudges up the cobbled walkway, dragging his rolling case and trying to ignore how the other bag’s strap is digging into his shoulder. He is already plotting his revenge, and because he is very tired and in deep need of a long shower, most of his plans involve honey, rope, and an ant pile in the desert._

_Kurt Hummel is a cranky, cranky person when he gets this tired._

_The walkway abruptly terminates at a tall wall, greenery bursting in bright plumes over the top and spilling a little down the sides._

_ _

_Kurt blinks owlishly at the genial-looking Italian man standing by the heavy door in the wall. “_ Buon pomeriggio, Signore _!” The salutation is amiable, his smile friendly. “You must be_ Signore _Hummel._ Signore _Smythe called to say you were near, I thought I’d come make sure you knew where to go.” He steps forward and sticks his hand out in greeting. “_ Mi chiamo _Lorenzo, and welcome to the_  Oltre Il Giardino _.”_

“ _This is a hotel?” What lies beyond the door in the wall looks more like a house, a large, greyish-cream colored mansion of a house, lovely and elegant. The garden is perfectly tended and beautifully green, dotted with small white tables. “It’s beautiful.”_

“Grazie _.” Lorenzo continues to smile as he guides Kurt through the garden to the doorway. “It doesn’t look like a hotel, hm? It was once the home of Mahler’s widow, and now…well, it may not be the largest hotel in_ Venezia _, but we hope you like it here all the same.”_

“ _I think I’ll love it.” He’d love anywhere that meant an end to his wanderings, but the hotel seems perfectly designed to appeal to him no matter what his mood. Inside, it is cool and calm, decorated in tranquil colors, with an almost whimsical mix of modern and antique touches. Further, he is delighted when Lorenzo guides him to a room that is on the ground floor. “Oh, thank God, no stairs.”_

“ _No,_ Signore _Smythe booked this suite especially – he said you would be tired after walking. I don’t know why he had you walk at all.” The smile becomes a puzzled frown. “There’s a water taxi stop right outside.”_

_Kurt reminds himself that murder does no one’s thriving career any good, and also a dead lover is of no use to anyone._

“ _But I hope you like the room. It’s one of our popular ones,” Lorenzo continues, unlocking the door and ushering him inside. “Usually families like it and it’s booked, but you’re lucky it was available.”_

_ _

“ _Amazing,” Kurt breathes, looking around. It’s a little gem of a suite, shades of white dotted here and there with touches of green. They’re in a sitting room with ornately carved doors that lead into a bedroom with a bed he wants to dive right into. And is that a door that leads right back out into the garden?_

“ _Now, you go put your things down, and I’ll be right back,” comes the instruction, and by the time Kurt turns around, the man is gone, leaving him alone._

_Wait. Alone?_

_Where is Sebastian?_

His hand comes up and grips at the back of Kurt’s neck when Kurt first pushes his cock carefully inside, the only sound Sebastian makes is a quiet, sharp exhalation at the sensation of unaccustomed fullness.

It’s not that Sebastian doesn’t like bottoming, he just…doesn’t do it. Not often. With most partners because it’s a power trip, the slow climb and steep satisfaction of taking them apart, of demanding they come for him. On top, he feels in charge of what happens.

With Kurt, it’s still been for the sake of watching him fall apart, but there’s an awe and a pride to it that’s never present with anyone else. Sebastian admits he’s been selfish in this, but doesn’t regret it, not at all. Not when his memory is filled with groaning kisses and the pale curve of Kurt’s throat, of hot come against his stomach and whispers of  _fuck, yes, fuck, coming, I’m, yes, please faster -_

But there’s an intimacy now with the roles reversed, or maybe the intimacy came with the talk from earlier, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t really care, either, as Kurt presses more deeply inside, takes his time, begins to rock gently in and out. After a moment, Sebastian catches the rhythm and begins to rock with him, his hand still firm on Kurt’s neck to anchor himself.

“ _Here.” When Lorenzo returns, it is with an envelope and a covered bowl on a tray. “_ Signore _Smythe asked that I bring this right to you when you arrive.”_

_With a frown, Kurt reaches for the envelope. “And where is my wayward traveling companion? I see his bags, but I seem to be otherwise alone.”_

“ _He said the letter would explain.” With a sympathetic smile, Lorenzo deposits the tray on the low table near the windows. “Should you need anything, do not hesitate to ask. Enjoy your stay.” And he’s gone again, with Kurt feeling simultaneously appreciative of his surroundings and completely annoyed at being alone to enjoy them. With care, he wedges a finger under the flap of the envelope and tugs it open, extracting a single sheet of paper covered in Sebastian’s spiky handwriting._

“ _Dessert?” He looks up and moves over to peek under the covering of the bowl Lorenzo brought in. A gorgeous and delicious-looking tiramisu is layered temptingly in the large porcelain basin, an ornate spoon laid down on a napkin next to it, waiting to be dipped into the sweet treat. Kurt scoops out a mouthwatering bite immediately, realizing all of a sudden that he’s starving and that airline food, while better in Europe, is still not real food._

_It’s not cheesecake, but it is a little taste of heaven, and it takes considerable effort for him to put the spoon down and return to the letter._

_When he’s done, he sets it down, no more enlightened than when he first began to read it._

_Message From Kurt: Where ARE you?_

_But fifteen minutes later, there’s no response, and the clock is ticking ever closer to four. There’s nothing to do but follow directions. Directions that make him feel oddly warm and fuzzy through his irritation, make him feel like someone is taking care of him for the first time in too long._

_A smile drifts across his lips at the thought of it, a smile that vanishes as quickly as it tried to appear. This is a game, a lark, a fun distraction. He doesn’t need to get sucked into feeling things that won’t ever be there. Things have gotten complicated enough in his head as it is, lately._

_Kurt picks up his tiramisu and resolutely stalks off to run a hot bath and relax._

Sound yes, speaking no – breaths hitching and gasping in tandem, fingers tangling and nails scratching. Delicate fiery crescents burn into Sebastian’s thigh where Kurt is gripping him, welcome little aches and pains he’ll feel for days with an indelible satisfaction.

He twists his upper body, turning to halfway face Kurt as best he can and tilting his face up. Their lips meet and fuse, tongues slipping past each other while they share hot gasping breaths, hands roaming over flushed skin, pausing here to pinch lightly, there to press firmly. Sebastian’s back arches as he breathes in deep, slings his leg over Kurt’s to pull him in even closer.

At last he has to face forward again, the slightly awkward twist beginning to make his back hurt, but he reaches his hands back to curve his long fingers around the tight backs of Kurt’s thighs, rocking his ass down to meet each thrust. Still no words form, only desperate murmurs hissing out from between his teeth while Kurt presses his lips hard to Sebastian’s shoulder, reaches his hand around to grip and stroke at Sebastian’s cock again.

_As Sebastian had clearly known it would, a luxurious bath and the decadence of soaking in it while eating what is basically a liqueur and cookie custard goes a long way towards taking the edge off of Kurt’s annoyance. He is a puddle of contentment wreathed in a steamy cloud of delicious scent, surrounded by the strains of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony - he’d downloaded it to his laptop and set it playing, thinking it was only appropriate._

_It is with reluctance that Kurt eventually does finish his treat and emerges from the bath, pruney but considerably relaxed. A glance at the clock surprises him – it’s already five minutes to four. And just as he’s beginning to panic about not knowing what to wear, because he doesn’t know who his visitor is, or why he’s getting a visitor in the first place, there’s a knock at the door._

_Gathering up a plush robe and every ounce of dignity he can muster, Kurt cracks the door open and peers out, surprised to see a young woman standing there, with bright brown eyes and a thick dark braid slung over her shoulder. Her face brightens into a smile when she sees him. “_ Buon giorno _,” she greets him, holding up a tiny blue business card with the simple legend:_  Giovanna – Massaggiatore – Naturapato – Istruttore di Yoga _. “You’re Kurt?”_

“ _Yes?” She looks harmless enough, so he backs up and opens the door. “You’re my visitor?”_

“ _I’m your masseuse.” Her smile only grows broader as she wrestles a portable massage table into the room. “It will only take me a minute to set up. Off with the robe.”_

“ _Masseuse?” What is Sebastian up to? He knows he doesn’t have to butter up Kurt to get laid, and surely he doesn’t actually think the Gibraltar storm was his fault? Not to mention this seems a little overboard for making up for sending Kurt all over Venice. “Are you sure?”_

“Si _._ Signore _Smythe booked me for you.” Giovanna flashes him a wink, flipping the table to standing. “Lucky you have a sweet boyfriend.”_

“ _Oh, he’s not my boyfriend,” Kurt blurts out in a frantic rushing tumble of words. “No no, we’re just friends. Not dating.”_

_Giovanna arches an eyebrow as she leads him to lay face down on her table. “Everyone should be so fortunate to have a friend who is so very nice to such a gorgeous man.”_

_Yeah, Kurt’s trying to not think too hard on that one._

Kurt slows down, his thrusts becoming almost lazy. “Come for me?” he murmurs, hand pulling sure, firm strokes on Sebastian’s cock. His breath is warm and his voice low, intimate, even tender, as if the three words he’d just let slip were something with greater meaning entirely.

Who knows? Perhaps for the two of them, these three words are best, far more appropriate than any other three that lovers might exchange. This is no ordinary affair, they no ordinary pairing – and for Sebastian, certainly, being in the position of receiver and supplicant, taking what Kurt chooses to give him, it is a matter of trust given to no other person, maybe it’s the most Sebastian is capable of relinquishing.

“Please? Come? For me?” Kurt asks again, dusky and sweet, and there’s nothing else for it, nothing to be done but what he asks, and so Sebastian does, long and hard and with a shudder that rocks his entire body.

_After Giovanna works her magic, reducing Kurt to a happy, boneless, drooping human being, she has to all but pick him up and deposit him into the bed, guiding him to rest under the cool white coverings._

“ _The_ signore _told me to tell you to sleep well, and he will come for you when it’s time,” she had whispered, tugging up the duvet. “So, sleep well, and I think dream of him – even if he is not_ il tuo ragazzo _.” A pat on his shoulder. “Maybe you think of how he should be,_ si _?”_

_But he doesn’t dream, only drifts._

_Warmth against his back, lips on his shoulder and a gentle hand stroking his cock – these are the things that slowly pull Kurt back to wakefulness._

_He sinks back into Sebastian’s arms now, spine to chest, pulse to heartbeat. “Hi,” comes the whisper in his ear, soft and playful, a little gritty with desire. “I brought dinner.”_

“ _Not hungry.” Kurt rocks his hips back, snugging his ass into Sebastian’s crotch for just a moment before rocking back forward to push his cock through Sebastian’s fist. “Mmm.”_

_Much to his disappointment, Sebastian’s hand disengages, and he feels himself being shoved around and pulled up to sitting. Sebastian is facing him with a grin, clad only in his usual low slung, faded jeans that only just cling to his hips. “You are incredibly adorable when you’re asleep. I never noticed.” He turns away, slipping out of the bed to grab a covered container of something that smells incredible, the aroma of garlic and butter and seafood filling Kurt’s nose and making him instantly forgive the aborted handjob. “Here, eat, you still need to get dressed so we can go.”_

“ _Go?” Kurt accepts the fork and container, opening it up to find a delicate lobster risotto waiting for him. He barely gets out a “Go where?” before all but diving into the divine smelling dish, knowing he’s eating like a pig but completely unwilling to stop. It’s almost obscene how good this is._

“ _Just out,” Sebastian replies with a smile, dropping back down onto the bed with a container of his own. “Somewhere.”_

_This is really starting to feel very close to being some kind of date. “I feel like I’m being spoiled a little,” Kurt ventures cautiously, thinking back to earlier._

“ _Yeah, maybe a little,” is all Sebastian says, shrugging as he starts in on his own dinner. “You complaining?”_

No _, Kurt thinks between bites,_ but I am wondering. Wondering why you’re doing it…

…and why I think I could get used to it and be happy.

_It’s equal parts disturbing and interesting, much as the revelation of his sleeping patterns had been in Gibraltar._

If things hadn’t changed in Barcelona, if they hadn’t been off-kilter from the start in Paris, Sebastian knows for certain now that they’ve changed here. Now there’s no denying that there’s something more going on, no ignoring that the energy between them has shifted, mellowed and sharpened at the same time.

Kurt is pressed up against his back again, breath slowing and evening out. “Go to sleep,” he mumbles into Sebastian’s ear, and there’s three more words that would have more meaning between the two of them than any three other more traditional ones. They mean that Kurt gives a damn about him, just like everything he’s arranged today means he gives a damn about Kurt, and wow, doesn’t that just scare him to death?

_If he’d thought Venice by day was lovely, Venice by night is breathtaking._

_The moon sails through the clear sky not unlike their gondola cutting through the quiet back canals of the city, lighting everything in a wash of silver. They’re far from the Grand Canal, far from the normal tourist-packed areas, so there are fewer other boats on the water and it’s as quiet as Kurt thinks Venice might ever get, the only sounds the murmurs of people on balconies and walkways, their gondolier’s humming, the water rippling around and lapping at the sides of the boat._

“ _You didn’t have to do this,” he says at last, the first words between them since boarding._

“ _I wanted to.” Sebastian is reclined next to him on a bench in the gondola that’s almost as large as a bed. By unspoken agreement they aren’t wrapped up in each other, not like other couples – because they aren’t a couple, Kurt asserts fiercely to himself – but their hands are touching, not holding, just fingers lightly intertwined, bridging the gap between their bodies. “I said I’d make Gibraltar up to you.”_

“ _Gibraltar wasn’t your fault,” Kurt reminds him for the dozenth time, tipping his head to the side to deliver an exasperated, but fond smile. “You can’t control the weather.”_

_Sebastian’s responding shrug has an air of being slightly forced in its militant casualness. “I wanted to do it anyway.”_

_Kurt rolls his head back to look up at the clear sky. “It’s just been kind of romantic.” Abruptly, he can feel Sebastian tense at his side. “You have never struck me as any kind of romantic. Not ever.”_

_There’s no response. Not so much as a sharp intake of breath. Only silence and the sounds of life in Venice dancing on the breeze. At last, a soft exhalation. “I’m really not. This just seemed like something nice to do.”_

“ _Just like you don’t really do sleepovers. Sebastian…” Kurt watches from the corner of his eye as Sebastian very deliberately doesn’t look at him. He has to know, it’s been nagging at him all day and now it’s all but screaming in his ear. “This is supposed to be a game, right?”_

_Silence, long and tense silence, then - “Truth or dare?”_

“ _What?” It’s out of nowhere, unexpected, a complete non-sequitur. A nervous laugh escapes before Kurt can bite it behind his teeth, and he snatches his hand back. “What do you mean?”_

“ _It’s your turn. Truth or dare?”_

_And he remembers Amsterdam, remembers lungs full of marijuana smoke, a head clouded and pleasantly stuffed with giggles. Remembers asking the question that creaked the door between a fun diversion and something more genuine a little more widely open. “You can’t be serious.”_

“ _I told you I hadn’t forgotten. Your turn.”_

_There’s something in Sebastian’s eyes when he shifts to face Kurt that tightens his stomach with nerves and rushes his blood with adrenaline. The door is about to be pushed wider, he can stay on this side or cross over and this is all too fast, he needs to stay on this side but has to admit that he knows there’s a part of him that wonders what the other side would look like and - “Dare.”_

_The dare is safe, he thinks. A dare is straightforward, nothing that can trap him into revealing problematic thoughts and emotions that even now, it’s way too soon to even look at, let alone express._

_Except of course, trust a lawyer to find a loophole. “I dare you to tell me what happened between you and Blaine.”_

But nothing matters until the ghosts of their pasts stop haunting them at every turn. Sebastian knows he has to figure out what he’s going to do. This can’t go anywhere until he knows where  _he_  is going. If it can even then.

Most of all, this really,  _really_  can’t go anywhere until the specter of Blaine stops being that silent, gentle, occasionally suffocating presence that lingers just out of sight and reach. Even now, as Sebastian is drifting off to sleep, he can almost feel the other man in the room, even though Kurt rarely wears the ring on the chain anymore, even though Kurt never talks about him unless directly asked. Maybe  _because_  Kurt never talks about him unless asked.

Either way, Sebastian isn’t risking anything more than his body and trust until he knows more about what he’s up against. Kurt may say things are over between himself and Blaine, and Sebastian is at least fairly sure he has no intention of even trying to resurrect them at any point, but whatever happened was big, that much is clear. How could it not have been, with the history between them?

No, Sebastian isn’t comfortable acknowledging anything else unless he knows exactly what stands in his way.

_The question is a sucker punch to the gut. “No.”_

“ _I got deep, you get deep.” Sebastian’s eyes are still so opaque, so unreadable, full of things Kurt needs to know and is afraid to find out about. “What happened?”_

_Kurt shakes his head. He can’t put it to words, not like this. He needs time to prepare and organize himself so that he doesn’t become a shaking wreck. “I can’t. Pick something else.”_

“ _No, you have to answer the question I asked you.” A tiny smirk. “Those are the rules.”_

“ _Oh, and you aren’t breaking rules for me left and right?” It’s a challenge and Kurt knows it, just like he knows Sebastian can’t resist a challenge any more than he can._

_Until, apparently, now. Sebastian’s jaw sets tightly. “Forget it. Yes, this is still a game.” He shifts back and puts his hands behind his head, turning his attention back out to the canal._

_The implications of the simple statement – an answer that isn’t, revealing nothing and everything all at once - are staggering. “What changed?”_

“ _I can’t sleep without you,” is the only answer he gets before silence drops between them like a dark, soft blanket._

They stay for a full week in Venice, each day more indulgent than the last. Kurt doesn’t tell his story and Sebastian doesn’t push for it, and after the first night a dreamy indolence drapes over them both that neither wants to disturb.

And it is Sebastian who must eventually, with great regret and reluctance, prod Kurt to make his arrangements and move on to the next city, even though he has come to think he would be perfectly content to stay in Venice, in this situation, forever, regardless of phantoms and persecutions and confusing, unacknowledged feelings.

The photo arrives while Sebastian is grumpily packing up his things, and he has to sit down and stare at it, blinking in confusion.

Picture Message From Kurt: 

It’s nowhere he’s ever been in his life. Sebastian has no idea where Kurt has gone.

But he definitely has to figure it out, because the next message is,  _Find me and I’ll tell you._


	8. You Were A Truth I Would Rather Lose (Than To Have Never Lain Beside At All)

_Message From Sebastian: Sending me a photo of a castle in Europe and telling me to meet you there is like saying you’ll meet me at the buckeye tree around the corner in Ohio. You know that, right?_

_Message From Kurt: Bitch, bitch, moan, moan. You made me traipse all over Venice just to find our hotel._

_Message From Sebastian: Yeah, that was maybe a mile walk, I have a feeling wherever you are is kind of a longer hike?_

_Message From Kurt: I don’t know. Maybe? You tell me._

_Picture Message From Kurt:_

_Message From Sebastian: You’re shopping._

_Message From Kurt: …yes but that’s not the point, Mr. Unobservant._

“Are you particularly attached to this shirt?” The question comes on a rush of air underscored with a snarling hum of desire, seconds after Sebastian has hustled Kurt into their hotel room, kicking the door shut behind them. There’s no time or room for Kurt to think, not when he’s already pushed hard against the wall, not when Sebastian’s mouth is so greedy and devouring on his, not when the shirt he’s being asked about is already pulled up out of his jeans and rough, hot hands are roaming and grasping all over Kurt’s chest and stomach, fingernails piercing into his skin and making him gasp.

Sebastian doesn’t wait for an answer anyway, growling, “Fuck it, I’ll buy you a new one,” just before he pulls his hands out and literally rips the button-down open, throwing it aside and wrapping his hands around the back of Kurt’s neck. His thumbs tuck into the space just behind Kurt’s jaw on either side, tilt up his head and then his mouth is on Kurt’s again, demanding and taking with an intensity that literally hadn’t been present until they were in the elevator heading up here.

_Message From Sebastian: Okay. Uh…the drivers are on the wrong side and there’s an HMV…so you’re somewhere in the vicinity of the UK?_

_Message From Kurt: Polo._

_Message From Sebastian: What??_

_Message From Kurt: You know, like Marco Polo…_

_Message From Sebastian: Oh. Cute. Hey, that reminds me, I’m still in Venice not getting any younger._

_Message From Kurt: Oh for…fine. Wait._

_Message From Sebastian: For what?_

_Message From Kurt: I’m trying to find a cab. Shut up for ten minutes._

_Message From Kurt: By the way, do I need to remind you that this entire game was actually your idea? I invited you to Prague for blowjobs and breakfast, not The Amazing Race._

_Message From Sebastian: They’ve started having sex marathons on The Amazing Race? Totally got to start watching it again._

“Cameras,” Kurt had blurted when Sebastian latched on to him then, but he very very quickly came not to care right about the time he was backed up against the mirrored wall. Over Sebastian’s shoulder, he watched their reflection in the other wall through eyes already half-closed with the pleasure, watched Sebastian’s hands sliding down his arms to tangle their fingers together while he sucked hot kisses into Kurt’s neck, his teeth scraping over the too-sensitive skin that was already shading to violet under his lips.

Now, safely alone in the room, they’re yanking clothing off of each other, hot breath scorching sensitive skin, fingers threading through hair, clenching, pulling, gasps and long, drawn out groans. Hips slot together and grind hard through what’s left of what they’ve got on – not much at this point, both down to boxers or briefs, Sebastian’s shirt hanging open and down around his elbows.

_Picture Message From Kurt:_

_Message From Kurt: I can’t make it any plainer._

_Message From Sebastian: You’re in Dublin? What the hell is in Dublin?_

_Message From Kurt: NOT YOU._

_Message From Sebastian: Okay okay, I’m calling Vivian now…_

Kurt doesn’t know what’s prompted this kind of urgency, this heat and drive and almost possessive  _need_  that’s radiating off of Sebastian like heat on a pavement in the summertime. Their last few nights together have been sweet and slow, almost enough to fool Kurt into thinking they really could have a chance at more, maybe, if he’d wanted it.

But he doesn’t know if he wants it, still feels fairly certain he doesn’t deserve it, and really, in the end,  _more_  would not be Sebastian’s thing, no matter how nice he’s being, right?

Best not to think about it.

Best not to think.

“ _Thank God for budget airlines,” Sebastian mutters to himself with a grin as he tugs his phone out of his bag. Vivian had actually gotten him to Ireland way faster than he’d hoped or, he thought, than Kurt had intended. But then, in revenge for Venice, Kurt had led him a merry chase all around Dublin, actually sending photos of places he’d just left until Sebastian texted,_ It’s not like you to stall; you wimping out?

_That had landed him the photo currently on his phone, which still wasn’t making things too entirely easy._

_Message From Kurt: This is the view from where I am._

_Picture Message From Kurt:_

_Sebastian turns away from the head shop to consider his choices for Kurt’s probable locale. From Nirvana’s storefront, there are three candidates, two shops and a pub. Immediately, he dismisses the pub; it’s not Kurt’s style. Nightclub, yes, pub, no. And it’s too early for clubbing._

_That leaves him with two choices, both equally likely._

_After a moment of thought, he tucks his phone away and picks the shop on the left._

Who can think, anyway, when Sebastian’s on his knees, mouthing at Kurt’s cock through his briefs. “Gonna have you here,” he mumbles, tongue licking out and dampening the soft cotton, hands running over Kurt’s thighs and ass. “Want you here, now, want…”

“Uh-huh,” Kurt breathes out, all knowledge of every language he ever even remotely studied or knew having flown from his mind, leaving him with only rudimentary communication. He tilts his head back as Sebastian pulls his dick through the front of his briefs, hips rocking forward towards warmth, towards envelopment, towards a generous, greedy, eager mouth that gratifyingly, still can never seem to get enough of sucking him off.

He is still absolutely  _not_  complaining.

“ _You found me.” When the yarn shop’s bells jingle, Kurt looks up from the two balls of soft Irish wool in his hands and smiles, just a little, just a tiny quirk of his mouth. “Good job.”_

“ _Eh. I knew you wouldn’t be in the pub, and given the two choices you left me after that, I picked the one I was pretty sure you thought I wouldn’t choose.” Sebastian shoves his hands into his pockets and glances around the yarn shop. “It’s like you think I don’t know you.”_

_Kurt huffs out a short chuckle. “In so many ways, you don’t.”_

“ _Yeah, but give me some credit for brains? I’m more than just a pretty face.” Sebastian tilts his chin to indicate the yarn Kurt’s holding, feeling unaccountably smug still. “For one thing, you design clothes for a living. I know you love music, so the music store_  was  _a possibility_ , _but I also know you’ve been sketching designs when you think I’m not looking.” He quirks up an eyebrow. “This is supposed to be a vacation, Mr. Hummel.”_

_Red stains Kurt’s cheeks as he grins sheepishly. “It is a vacation. But I can’t tell my assistants I spent a month screwing you all over the continent…as far as they’re concerned, this is a working tour of Europe. I’m gathering inspiration from the cities I explore or whatever. I have to have some preliminary sketches and ideas when I go home.”_

“ _Mmhm.” Carefully, Sebastian leans on a nearby shelf and nods again at the yarn in Kurt’s hands. “So what’s your inspiration for that?”_

_Kurt holds up the skeins of yarn, all of them in varying shades of gray from charcoal to overcast sky to dove. “In Ireland I was inspired by the overcast sky after a late summer storm to add a range of knit accessories to my line for the the oncoming fall season.”_

“ _Really?” Sebastian reaches over to touch one of the skeins, and as he expects, it’s soft, sensual at his fingertips, exactly what he would have expected Kurt to select. He pulls back and crosses his arms. “Poetic.”_

“ _Well, no, but it sounds good. It’s not my job to write the copy for my designs, I just like to have a hand in…wait.” Kurt looks up again from the yarn, now frowning. “What’s the other thing?”_

_The question makes no sense. “Huh?”_

“ _The other thing.” Kurt’s attention is back on the display before him, and he pulls down another pair of skeins in a gray so light it’s almost white. Absently, he strokes one of them against his cheek for just a moment before squeezing the entire armload of yarn to his chest. “You said ‘for one thing’, so that tells me there’s another thing.”_

_Oh. Right. Damn it. He’d been hoping Kurt wouldn’t catch that. Crap._

_  
“Oh. Uh…it’s…that.” Sebastian waves his hand at the yarn in Kurt’s hand, at his thumb stroking mindlessly up and down strands of the stuff. He can feel his face getting a little warm again at revealing something that’s such a personal observation, that gives away how closely his attention has been focused on Kurt lately.“You touch something soft and you play with it. When you’re worried or a little upset.”_

“ _You noticed that?” There’s an odd, slightly confused expression on Kurt’s face. “Why?”_

“ _Because…sometimes it’s my hair.”_

_They both blush a little at that. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”_

“ _No! No.” Now Sebastian is completely flustered and is losing control of his filter. “I don’t, you know. Mind. That you do it.”_ Why? Why did I say that?

_Fortunately, Kurt is frowning and seems too distracted to notice Sebastian’s momentary loss of composure. “Why do you think I’m worried or upset?”_

_And even more fortunately, this question gives Sebastian time to slip his cocksure confidence back into place. He digs out his phone and holds it up. “’Find me and I’ll tell you’?” He snorts, feeling more steady with every moment. “You’ve been a little distant since that night on the gondola. You did your level best to make finding you as difficult as possible this time. And here you are, groping yarn exactly like I thought you would be, which only proves to me that you are upset or worried about what you’re going to tell me about you and Blaine.” Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Sebastian keeps a careful eye on Kurt. “So? Am I wrong?”_

_Caught out, Kurt can only inhale slowly and draw his shoulders back, his fingers squeezing the skeins of yarn in his hand tightly enough that his knuckles contrast white as snow against the deep heathered charcoal colored wool. “No,” he admits, suddenly very deeply unhappy. “Let me buy this and we’ll go get dinner.”_

Sebastian licks up his shaft, long and slow and lazy, ending with a leisurely swirl around the head before he all but swallows Kurt whole, taking him into his mouth and throat in a smooth motion. His head dips, pulls back, his tongue swirls again, and he repeats the process, pinning Kurt’s hips down against the wall as the cycle builds him up higher and higher.

If anyone has ever elevated oral sex to an art form, it’s Sebastian, though Kurt feels confident that he gives the man a damn good run for his money, when he gets the chance.

Just as Kurt’s toes are curling into the carpet and his hands are wound tight in Sebastian’s hair, he hears the growled order. “Turn,” Sebastian pulls off and tells him, accompanying his demand with a push and a smack to the ass that stings and sends shivers up Kurt’s spine.

Hm. He might like this an awful lot, he thinks.

_Patience._

_It has never been Sebastian’s strong suit, and Kurt has been trying his for the last twenty minutes._

_Still, he discovers, it’s easy to find previously unknown wells of tolerance when you’ve spent that twenty minutes watching someone you’ve come - however uncomfortably - to care about picking at their food instead of actually eating it. So Sebastian waits, picking at his own dinner, but at least occasionally taking a bite._

_Kurt’s pizza sits, completely dismantled into piles of cheese and sauce and crust. It is otherwise untouched, abandoned in favor of a big glass of wine. Sebastian is starting to feel slightly guilty about cornering Kurt into revealing this; it seems fairly clear to him that emotionally, whatever happened with Kurt and Blaine is a way bigger minefield than the stalemate he faces with his father over his law career._

_He wonders again how the playful fun of screwing their way across Europe diffused into something altogether more real. Wonders what to do about it, if there’s anything he wants to do about it. If it’s a good idea to._

_At last, just as he is about to speak up and say, forget it, Kurt takes a long breath and meets his eyes. “It wasn’t some hugely dramatic thing, you know. No broken dishes or screaming matches or soul-crushing heartbreak.”_

Could have fooled me _. “Really.”_

“ _No. It was…” He hesitates, picking at the stack of pepperoni slices on his place. “Sad. Painful. But not a really massive awful thing.”_

_Sebastian feels his eyes widen at the patent bullshitting. “You sure about that?” Reaching across the table, he touches the ring he can see outlined under the soft fabric of Kurt’s button-down. “You still wear this sometimes.”_

“ _Not on my hand.”_

“ _Close to your heart,” Sebastian counters before he can stop himself._

When Sebastian’s tongue flicks out over his hole, Kurt melts back into the soft caress, wishing – not for the first time – that hotels came with wall-mounted bars that he could grab onto. His knees go weak when the first intrusion comes, the blunt thick tip of Sebastian’s tongue pressing forward inside of his body, moving with such measured slowness as to be agonizing.

His fingers curl against the wall in unconscious echo of Sebastian’s fingers that are kneading his ass, stretching and kinking like he’s reaching for something that’s just beyond what he can touch. And Sebastian’s tongue keeps pressing, licking, tasting and thrusting as far inside as he can get it, never letting up, pushing Kurt further up towards the peak but never letting him quite summit -

Kurt groans in frustration when Sebastian pulls back  _again,_ sliding up to standing until he’s leaned up close all along the length of Kurt’s body and Kurt can feel his cock, just as hot and hard as his own, pressing against his ass like a brand. “I got you,” Sebastian tells him with a hard bite to the back of his neck before he disappears to rummage in their bags for what they need.

_Kurt’s eyes drop back to his plate, just for a moment, then his shoulders heave again and his head comes up, his gaze focused on nothing. The look that shapes his face now is blandly pleasant, a look Sebastian remembers from long, long ago and now recognizes as Kurt’s ‘Everything Is Perfectly Fine’ face. In high school, it had amused him to see it, usually because he was the one who caused it._

_It’s really not funny now._

“ _It just…ended,” Kurt finally says, his eyes still fixed on some distant horizon. “I guess if a relationship were a person, they’d call it natural causes.”_

_Sebastian forks up another mouthful of manicotti and waits for Kurt to go on. “That doesn’t sound like a huge problem,” he ventures eventually when the silence at the table weighs a thousand pounds. It also doesn’t seem like it could possibly be that simple, not when Kurt has looked wrecked every time it’s even mentioned, not when he’s avoided the topic with all the subtlety of a brick to the head for the last month._

“ _It’s the entire problem.” Suddenly, Kurt’s eyes focus on him and his jaw sets. It’s two long breaths and a handful of heartbeats before he speaks again, each word seeming pulled with agonizing slowness. “It’s the whole problem because it…it shouldn’t have. Everything was fine. It was good. It always had been good. And then it wasn’t. No explosions, no arguments, no cheating…it just died.” It seems like it should be impossible for him to go on, he’s gritting his teeth together so tightly, but he does. “I woke up one day and I realized we’d both forgotten our anniversary.”_

_It’s already very clear that Sebastian needs to tread very, very lightly here. Keep things simple. “Okay,” he replies, quiet, calm, and leaves it at that, digs up even more patience than he had ever known he possessed. And waits._

“ _And it bothered me how much it didn’t bother me.” By now, Kurt has picked his fork back up and is reducing the pile of discarded mozzarella back into its component shreds with a fearsome concentration. “We’d just gotten engaged a couple of months before. You’d think the most important day of our relationship, the whole reason we were two people engaged to each other in the first place, you’d think that would have been right there in the front of our minds, but no. Just…it wasn’t there. It went right past us. And I didn’t care.”_

“ _Maybe you were still excited about the engagement,” Sebastian offers, feeling his guilt rise ever higher as Kurt’s agitation grows. “I don’t know much about relationships but that seems -”_

“ _No. No, Sebastian, I didn’t forget my anniversary because I was excited about being engaged.” Kurt swigs down half a glass of Pinot Noir and his cheeks, already flushed with anger, grow even more red. “I forgot because I wasn’t in love with my fiancé anymore.”_

He tries to get himself a little under control while he waits, struggling to regulate his breath and heart to a less excitable rate. It’s a vain exercise – just thinking of what comes next gets him wound up all over again – but he tries, wanting to make this last and feeling somehow sure that Sebastian’s need won’t let it.

I got you, he thinks, and wonders at it, how they have their own language for this unconventional relationship. It’s only been about a month, too soon for a more traditional triad of words even if this wasn’t a temporary waystation for each of them. But, Kurt thinks, if they were to defy all sense and try to be more than what they should be, would they say those words even then? He can’t imagine it. Feeling it, maybe, in a fever dream, but no, never in a million years saying it.

_Whoa._

_It actually is the last thing Sebastian expects. Kurt’s defensiveness around the entire subject of his split with Blaine had led him to think that Blaine had left Kurt. He’d seemed so hurt, so heartbroken. And while Sebastian has no doubt at all that Kurt is indeed both hurt and heartbroken, they’re not the ultimate source of his pervasive aching._

_What is, Sebastian now realizes, is guilt._

“ _The worst thing is, I still don’t even know how I got there.” Kurt’s focus is off in the distance again, his fingers now running along the chain at his throat. “I’m still…I’m still trying to figure it out. Every day. My high school sweetheart. First boyfriend, first love, we lost our virginity together. I loved him…” His voice hitches, a tiny hiccup, then smooths out and steadies with another deep breath. “I loved him so much it hurt. How do you fall out of love with someone who would do anything for you?”_

_This conversation is so out of Sebastian’s depth, and he feels himself floundering for some way to fix it. Something, anything, but there’s nothing and Kurt keeps going on._

“ _I spent another month waking up next to him and willing myself to fall back in love. Telling myself over and over that I had no reason to ruin all of this. That being with someone like Blaine was a thousand in one lifetime chance – I mean, you don’t even know what coincidence and chance went into us even meeting in the first place.”_

“ _I do, a little,” Sebastian interjects. “You two had some pretty big fans in the Warblers there for a while. When I first arrived at Dalton I heard the whole story…”_

“ _And it’s a good story, isn’t it?” Kurt’s smile and tone are a little too bitter for comfort, full of the acid feel of cheap vodka on an empty stomach. “Fate on a spiral staircase. A good looking boy with the most beautiful eyes and a goddamn pocket watch in his hand turns around and smiles at you, at a time in your life when you think that’s never, ever going to happen – and then just months later, he’s yours, he loves you, he’s absolutely Prince Charming. You don’t…you don’t just throw that away less than ten years later. You don’t.”_

_He can all but hear what’s next. “But…”_

“ _But I did.” At once, Kurt is soft and sad and vulnerable, guilt spiking off of him like barbed wire. “I loved Blaine. So much. I loved him and I wanted what was best for him, what made him happy, and all of a sudden I had to acknowledge that that wasn’t me anymore no matter how hard I wished…and I wished so hard, every night on every star I saw.” He reaches for the bottle of wine and pours another glass, slugs it back right away. “You know Blaine. He deserves nothing but to be loved wholly and completely, he doesn’t deserve to shackle himself to someone who can’t give him that. I tried and I tried and I -”_

“ _Kurt -”_

“ _I would have stayed with him forever if I’d thought it would be fair to him, because he was still happy with me. He still loved me.” With every word, Sebastian can practically feel Kurt’s heart splintering with the anguish of hurting Blaine. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to him.”_

_Sebastian really doesn’t even know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, but the words can’t do anything._

“ _I promised him we were going to grow old together. Like in ‘The Notebook’. But better, because I was going to be there every step of the way.” The sigh that gusts out of Kurt’s mouth sounds like it had had to climb hand over hand up from his toes, along his spine, passing his aching heart, whispering through his throat. “Everyone says high school romances don’t last. I wanted us to be the exception.”_

“ _So nothing -”_

“ _Nothing. Nothing went wrong. At all. After everything that happened in high school, all of it – you, NYADA, Blaine’s frankly insane older brother, this guy I met, Chandler somebody – we got through all of that. We got through a year apart. We learned how to have mature, rational discussions and never go to bed angry with each other. We had date nights.” He props his elbows on the table and threads his fingers through his hair. When he speaks again, Sebastian has to strain to hear him. “It just died. I failed him and it died.”_

“ _Kurt.” Reaching a hand out, all Sebastian can do is curl his hand around Kurt’s wrist and feel helpless. He has no words, no idea how to make this better. Kurt’s obvious self-loathing could eat him alive, it’s such a palpably gaping void._

“ _What’s wrong with me? That I could fall out of love with someone who loved me like he did?” Shaking Sebastian off, Kurt grabs his glass and drains it. “It’s why I kept the ring. To remind me how defective I am.”_

So lost in thought is he that the push of Sebastian’s lube-slick fingers is a shivery surprise, shoving into him just a little more roughly than usual. “Sorry,” comes the whisper, only the barest trace of repentance even qualifying it as an apology. “Can’t wait. Can you take it?”

“Please,” Kurt breathes back over his shoulder, curling his fingers again against the paint of the wall. He wants,  _needs_ , Sebastian’s teasing finally transmitting all the urgency in the world to Kurt and now they’re both wound so, so tight. Kurt pushes back hard against the invading fingers, sucking a breath in through his teeth at the slight burn of the fast stretch. “Please,” he repeats, beginning to rock against the forward push of Sebastian’s hand.

Sebastian’s free arm snakes around his chest, pulling him close and tight so they’re as close as possible to being one person. His fingers invade and retreat, push and stretch and bend. “I got you,” he tells Kurt again in a harsh whisper. “I’ve always got you if you want this…c’mon…”

_This, Sebastian has a response for. “Wow. Hold on. You are so not defective.”_

“ _Still maintain you don’t know me very well.”_

_Sebastian grabs him again. “I have great instincts and I don’t make time for defective. Okay? Shit happens, Kurt. Not everything makes sense.”_

“ _I should have -” Oh, that stubborn face is so damn familiar. And while Sebastian does find Kurt’s mulish tendencies bizarrely endearing at this stage in their acquaintance, no way is he letting this slide without a fight. Two years is way too long to feel this unnecessarily bad about yourself._

“ _What? Fought harder? Done more?” He raises his hand and waves the waiter down for another bottle of wine. “My grandfather ran five miles a day, never smoked, rarely drank, and hadn’t eaten red meat in ten years when he kicked the bucket. Of a heart attack. Turns out his cholesterol was insane.”_

_Kurt’s eyes roll so hard, Sebastian can almost hear them sprain. “Your point?”_

“ _Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you do, nature’s gonna take its course.” He pauses, sifting through his mind for something, anything that could wipe the bitter smirk off of Kurt’s face. “Look, I know about being disappointed in yourself – no one better, right?”_

_Kurt shrugs, indifference clear in the gesture. “I guess.”_

“ _Kurt.” He waits until the other man finally looks up and meets his gaze before reaching across the table again to grab his hand. “My shit that’s going on is my fault. But yours?” He shakes his head. “You’re being too hard on yourself. I mean, yeah, it’s obviously an awful thing that happened, but you said it yourself – if you could wish it fixed, it would be. I’m pretty sure you never wanted to not be in love with Blaine.”_

“ _That’s…true,” Kurt replies, slowly, looking stunned and puzzled all at once, like this hasn’t ever occurred to him and no one has ever brought it up. Well, maybe that is the case. Sebastian has no idea if Kurt’s ever talked about any of this to anyone, though he’s leaning towards ‘probably not’ given how very like pulling teeth it had been to even get to this point._

_He decides to press the point home, knowing this much damage can’t be reversed in one night – if ever – but wanting to help. “I know how much you loved him. Anyone who ever spent five minutes with the two of you would have to have been blind and deaf not to know it. You fought me for him so hard, Kurt. And you won. I know firsthand how strong you can be.”_

“ _I…” Never in Sebastian’s memory has Kurt ever looked so like he’s been smacked in the face with a two by four._

“ _You wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t done everything you could think of to change your own mind, and…hey, guess what else?” He shakes Kurt’s hand around a little, making sure he’s still paying attention. “Didn’t you just say yourself that both of you forgot the anniversary?”_

Uncertain hitches of breath carry Kurt’s unwinding groans into the room, joining with Sebastian’s filthy encouragements in a composition as erotic as it is pornographic. By the time fingers are replaced with a cock that fills him to bursting, Kurt’s lost almost complete control of language, just about completely reduced to pants and moans he knows Sebastian will understand.

“I wanted to do this in that fucking skytrain in Spain,” Sebastian gasps hot into his ear, punctuating his sentence with a sharp nip. “Bend you over…fuck you over the city till you couldn’t stand up…”

Oh, two can play this game. “Wanna fuck myself,” Kurt shoots back, on a breath of desperate air, “want you to watch -”

Sebastian’s eyes widen with lust and surprise and Kurt realizes he’s hit on something that  _Sebastian_  really wants. “Fuck,” Sebastian grinds out, using the arm braced over Kurt’s chest to pull him even closer, as impossible as it seems, and his other hand reaches around to start stroking along the straining length of Kurt’s cock. “Want that…want to see it…fuck yourself on your own fingers…”

“You want that,” and Kurt makes it a statement, not a question, knows his voice is loaded with all kinds of self-satisfaction he can’t help but feel at the power he has. “You liked it…on the phone…”

“Fuck, of course I did…” It slides out of Sebastian’s mouth on a growl, and his thrusting now is hard, rough and bordering on violent in its force. Kurt braces himself as best he can but he is  _loving_  this, every pull and bite and the feeling of being completely restrained, at Sebastian’s full mercy  _except_  for the one thing he can do.

“Did you imagine it?” he whispers now, and it’s shaky what with him being fucked within an inch of his life but he gets it out, slips it over his shoulder with a sly glance and he’s rewarded with the sight of Sebastian’s head dropping, eyes closing as he groans in desperation. “Picture me on a bed, showing off for you, fucking myself on my fingers for you, did you see that, did you -”

_Kurt is still sitting in complete shock across the table. “How…how…I never…”_

“ _Normally, I am a big fan of your mouth being wide open, but we’re in public and it just looks weird.” Sebastian shoves the tray with the remainder of Kurt’s pizza over and looks pointedly at him. “Since my cock would be a completely inappropriate option at the moment, how about stuffing some pizza into it, soak up some of that wine?”_

_But Kurt doesn’t move, doesn’t even react to Sebastian’s deliberately provocative jibe. “Wait, how did that not ever occur to me?”_

“ _Fuck if I know.” Pulling back his hand, Sebastian pours them both one last glass of wine, determined to push things back uphill to a less depressing place, at least for the night. “And I don’t care. You know now, so get on the road to maybe not being so pissed off at yourself. Two years is a long damn time to hate yourself that much.” He jiggles the pizza tray again. “Eat, already, and I’ll let you have this wine.”_

_An unexpected laugh barks out of Kurt, startling them both. He reaches for the glass, but Sebastian pulls it away, shaking his head. “Oh, you are not my mother.”_

“ _Nope.” Sebastian smacks him away. “I’m the guy who was kind of hoping to fuck you later. Eat your damn pizza.”_

_Kurt’s eyebrows shoot up almost to his hairline. “I…admire your bluntness.”_

“ _No, you admire my_ ass _. I think you_ appreciate _my bluntness. There’s a difference.”_

“ _I actually can’t refute you on that point.” Still looking vaguely surprised, Kurt pulls a fresh slice of pizza off of the tray and nibbles at it for a moment before putting it back down. “Um. Thank you.”_

_Sebastian pauses, still holding back the wine. “For what?”_

“ _For not trying to fix me and not calling me crazy or telling me I’d come to my senses.” He’s blinking again, but this time Sebastian gets the idea it’s an effort to hold back angry tears. “Rachel did that for months. So did my dad.”_

_Oh. “Well. I want to get in your pants tonight. Kind of defeats the purpose if I’m openly questioning your sanity,” he replies lightly, putting the glass down and gently pushing it over to Kurt._

“Kurt -” It’s a warning draped in admiration wrapped in sheer desire. “I won’t last -”

He’s okay with that now. Kurt plants his hands more firmly on the wall and thrusts himself back  _hard_  onto Sebastian’s cock, meeting a thrust that lifts him onto his toes. “You couldn’t touch me,” he hisses delightedly, adjusting to match Sebastian’s rhythm. “You’d just watch, you’d just wish you could fuck me, I wouldn’t let you.” His words are getting faster as heat unfurls at the base of his spine and sends snaking tendrils up his back. “And you couldn’t touch yourself until I sa-”

Sebastian can’t hold back any more, his orgasm jackhammering through them both so hard Kurt thinks it could bring down the hotel. He buries his noisy outcry in Kurt’s shoulder, biting down a little too hard and bringing Kurt right over with him. Kurt’s whole body goes tight and rigid with the sheer violent force of the entire encounter, of his orgasm. With nothing to stifle his own shout in, Kurt bites his lip almost bloody trying not to shout the room down around their ears.

It’s the hardest he’s ever come in his life and it feels like something has ripped free inside of him, pulled itself out by the roots in a cathartic crisis that leaves him as emotionally drained as the sex has left him physically weak. They fall to the floor, tangled in each other, both a little stunned at the force of everything.

“Bed?” Sebastian asks, but they can’t, they simply cannot move or even really talk, not that Kurt has any idea what they’d say if they could.

He’d just as soon leave it that way. Too many questions will lead places he doesn’t think he deserves to go and is certain Sebastian would never  _want_ to go anyway.

No. This is good. This is best.

He thinks. Maybe.

_But now Kurt reaches over and smacks his hand. “It’s more than that. You’re actually giving a crap about my emotional well-being, Sebastian Smythe. You might have a heart after all.”_

“ _Take it back,” he retorts, half out of reflex and half to cover up the fact that the sentiment makes him feel unaccountably…warm is the only way he can think to put it. Like his favorite old sweatshirt with the holes in the elbows that he’s had since he was fifteen. He doesn’t know what to do with that. “Don’t make me figure out a way to sue you for slander.”_

_But Kurt shakes his head, a tiny smile on his lips, a mysteriously knowing look in his still-haunted eyes. “Never.” He doesn’t take his eyes off of Sebastian as he takes a long swallow of wine, and when he puts the glass down at last he looks like he’s searching for words. “Hey, Sebastian…”_

“ _Yeah?”_

“ _I’m happy I got to do this with you. As strange as it is that it is you of all people, I’m glad.” The wine glass is empty again and back down on the table now, but Kurt is fiddling with it, twirling the stem a little between his thumb and fingers. “It’s almost…oh, I don’t know. Sad, in a way, that there’s an expiration date on this.” And he does look sad about it. “But comforting, too. Is that weird?”_

 _Sebastian, being generally used to being the one giving the_ it’s not you, it’s me _speech, is surprised to recognize the familiar resigned regret threaded through those two words – though at least in Kurt’s case, it’s_ sincere _resigned regret. Taken completely aback, he forces a smile and a short laugh. “Uh, maybe a little.”_

“ _It’s just…I mean…” Now Kurt looks into the wine glass, as if he’s hoping the dregs of the Pinot are some sort of oracle that can help him with his little speech. “It’s nice to have fun with someone who isn’t a total stranger. Who cares about me in any way at all and makes sure I’m having a good time. It’s been so long…” He sighs. “Anyway. It’s good to know that there’s the security of knowing that even though it has to end, no one’s going to wind up hurt. This has been an experience I didn’t even know I needed…so thank you.”_

_It’s really surprising how large a disappointment it is, having it confirmed that he’s a transitory phase in Kurt’s life. Surprising to a degree that Sebastian doesn’t really care at all to examine. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with being temporary, it’s how he’s lived his entire life, he’s used to it by now…isn’t he?_

_Of course he is._

_And he had wanted to know where he stood, now he does. It’s all good, really. “I completely agree. Fun without consequences is the best thing.”_

_Kurt’s smile is bright and happy, the cloud of his confession dissipating more swiftly with each passing moment. “It is sort of your specialty, right?”_

_And what a fool he had been to lose track of that for even one second._

Picture Message From Sebastian: 

Message From Sebastian: Bring your sunscreen.


	9. Stranded Starfish Have No Place To Hide

_Message From Sebastian: How’s Dublin? Still Irish?_

**  
**_Message From Kurt: I’m not in Dublin._ **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: Wow, you figured that out WAY faster than I thought you would._ **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: Wait. That sounded bad. Let me try again._ **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: Fantastic! I can’t wait to see you. Excellent detective skills._ **  
  
** **“** Sit here,” Kurt directs, breaking off their kiss to shove Sebastian down into the chair in their hotel room. He leans down, mischief bright in his eyes as he licks his lips. “And  _stay_ here.” **  
  
**He’s got to admit, bossy Kurt is kind of his favorite Kurt. “Is that an order?” **  
  
**Kurt pulls back and tilts his head, ostentatiously pretending to consider the question. “Hm. Yes.” Leaning back in, he’s just close enough to flick his tongue out and lick the tip of Sebastian’s nose – and does. “Or I’ll tie you down.” **  
  
** _Holy shit_ , Sebastian thinks.  _What the hell’s gotten into Kurt?_ **  
  
**Whatever it is, his cock’s been stretched tight against the restriction of his jeans since Kurt leaned across their dinner table not fifteen minutes ago and said, “You know, the sooner you finish your coffee, the sooner we can go upstairs and fuck.” **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: For the record, I do think you’re smart._ **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: I just thought Thessaloniki was going to be at least a LITTLE tricky to guess._ **  
  
** _Message From Kurt: Actually, I’m in Munich._ **  
  
** _Message From Kurt: I figured out that it had to be somewhere along the southern coast of Europe so I got a head start. I was about to ask you for the next clue._ **  
  
** _Message From Kurt: I had NO idea how fast you could dig yourself into a hole. Impressive. You’ve really improved with age._ **  
  
** _Message From Sebastian: DAMN IT._ ****  
  
 _Message From Kurt: So did you just want to go ahead and book my flight for me while you’re on a roll?_

**  
  
**It takes a minute for Sebastian to realize he’s stopped breathing as he watches Kurt sidle backwards towards the bed, still smirking, still bright-eyed, still riding whatever dizzy high he’s been on for hours. A nearly frenetic energy all but leaps off of his smooth, pale skin when he unbuttons his shirt and peels it away from his body, tossing it to the floor before his hands fly to the waistband of his loose trousers. **  
  
**Sebastian only gets to hitch in one breath before it freezes in his lungs again when he realizes that Kurt didn’t wear briefs under his pants. How had he missed that? **  
  
**Kurt’s thumbs skim inside the waistband, his smile silky with satisfaction. “Mm. You do like what you see.” It’s not a question. **  
  
** **“** Always,” Sebastian croaks out, his hips shifting up, the delicious friction of his boxers and jeans a pleasure-pain-joy-agony he revels in. “You know that. You _know_.” **  
  
** **“** I do.” A deft flick of his fingers and the buttons undone, the trousers slumping a little down to show off a slip of arrowlike hipbones, a lickable incurving of stomach. Another pull and the zipper’s open, the linen puddled next to the shirt on the floor, and Kurt’s gloriously nude in front of him. The cock Sebastian likes so well stands thick and darkly rose-colored, illuminated in the moonlight splashing across Kurt’s abdomen. “Don’t move.” **  
  
**Suddenly, Sebastian is blisteringly aware of what’s about to happen. His mouth goes dry, and his fingers flex, gripping harder into the plush arms of the chair. **  
  
**Kurt sees it, and Kurt laughs in delight. **  
  
** _They’ve been in Greece together for two days, much of which time has been spent napping on the beach and swimming in the Aegean Sea._ **  
  
** **“** _I wouldn’t have picked you for the beach type.” Sebastian’s confession is muffled into his arm as he dozes under their sun umbrella. “I was kind of selfish picking this place. Well, I thought I was.”_ **  
  
** **“** _I picked Gibraltar,” Kurt reminds him while he reapplies his sunscreen. “Beaches and I came to an agreement at my first Fire Island circuit parties.”_ **  
  
** _One amused green eye sleepily opens, and Kurt catches half a smile peeking out from behind Sebastian’s bicep. “Really?”_ **  
  
** **“** _Mmhm.” Picking up his phone, Kurt clicks the camera on, framing a pretty panoramic view of the sand and water – with the added bonus of a Speedo-clad Adonis beaming into the lens when he catches Kurt taking the picture. Kurt smiles and nods at the guy. “Bathing in sunscreen and moisturizer seems a small price to pay for the scenery.”_ **  
  
** **“** _Perv.” Still grinning, Sebastian closes his eyes again._ **  
  
** _Kurt can only snort. “My, Mr. Pot, aren’t we a glossy shade of black today?”_ **  
  
** _But Sebastian’s only response is a yawn as he drifts back off to sleep._ **  
  
**He’s only allowed to look. He can’t touch. Not himself, not Kurt. Sebastian’s world is the chair in which he sits and the sight of Kurt sprawled out on their bed, one arm behind his head as the other lazily strokes at his cock. **  
  
**He really, really likes this world. It is a painful world, but it is a good one. **  
  
**A lust-shaded sigh of contentment slides out of Kurt’s mouth on a dirty exhalation, the only other sound besides Sebastian’s breathing and the slick of hand on lube-covered cock. He has no idea how Kurt can go so slowly, how he can draw this out. Sebastian himself is ready to come, has been for too many long tortuous minutes already. **  
  
** **“** Is it like you imagined?” Kurt’s voice is a lovely little tease, affectionate and evil all in one. “Is it what you pictured?” **  
  
**His mouth is so dry, Sebastian still can’t really talk. “Better.” As it would be, gorgeous Kurt stretched out in front of him in reality will always top anything his head can think of. **  
  
**It’s going to make it so fucking miserable when they finally go their separate ways. **  
  
** **“** Mm. Like having your mouth on me would be better than my hand?” The question comes with a slow wink, and – was that an invitation? Sebastian pushes himself up out of the chair, just a little, just slightly. **  
  
** **“** I could -” **  
  
** **“** No.” The steely command shoves Sebastian back into his chair as effectively as a hand on his chest. “You  _watch_.” **  
  
** _With a sigh that’s as fond as it is mildly exasperated, Kurt slips his sunglasses on and reclines back on his elbows, in theory watching the other beachgoers as they gleam in the sun. The reality is that he’s watching Sebastian out of the corner of his eye, admiring the long stretch of his back, his strong calves, the gloss of suntan lotion on his skin. Sunshine agrees more easily with Sebastian than with Kurt, kissing his shoulders with a dusting of appealing freckles as it turns the rest of him the warm golden brown of sunbeams on the sand at the end of the day._ **  
  
** _Knowing quite intimately that Sebastian prefers to tan naked, it had surprised Kurt at first to see him in board shorts rather than something with less coverage. But he is, after all, not only human but himself, so he came quickly to appreciate the tease of the shorts, the way their low sling reveals peeks and glimpses of hipbone, how the way they drape loosely over the swell of Sebastian’s toned ass._ ****  
  
 _Oops. Kurt shifts and feels his cheeks redden as his cock picks up on the increasingly lecherous slant of his thoughts. Time for another dip in the sea. Without thinking, he drops a kiss on Sebastian’s sun-warmed shoulder and gets to his feet._

****

_Kurt wades out until the water is lapping at his thighs and cool around his toes and then curves into a surface dive, slicing his way through the Aegean like a bullet. Back home in New York, he enjoys long, head-clearing sessions of lap swimming at his gym four times a week, a practice he was skeptical about for a while as a boy raised in landlocked Ohio._

_But now it’s as meditative as yoga, the easy stroke and slip through the water, as necessary and automatic as breathing to him in these last couple of years as his career took off and his personal life crumbled to pieces. Kurt rolls and cuts through the sea, surfacing here, diving there, forgetting that there’s no pool wall to stop him and make him turn around._ **  
  
** **“** What would you do right now if I let you?” **  
  
**The question fights to get through to Sebastian’s brain, and since all of his blood seems to have gathered at points way further south, it stalls there, answerless. And things only get worse as he watches Kurt pull his knees up, smirking as he still strokes his cock, but – fuck fuck _fuck_ **–** then he trails his other hand down from behind his head and over to the bottle of lube, tipping it into his hand in a deft gesture that dribbles the liquid into his palm. And he keeps  _watching_ Sebastian while he slides his fingers down between his thighs, between the cheeks of his ass, trailing his long middle finger over the puckered skin of his hole, making it glossy with the lube. **  
  
** **“** Sebastian?” Oh, he’s so  _smug_. Sebastian’s fingers ache with how hard they’re gripping the chair, all that’s keeping him down. **  
  
**Never mind how much his cock hurts right now. “I’d kiss you,” he starts, the words rough with how badly he wants to do more than that. “I’d have your cock in my hand and my mouth on yours and I’d kiss you while you fucked your cock through my fist.” **  
  
**The tip of Kurt’s finger dips into his hole and another of those decadent sighs escapes before he closes his eyes and bites his lips, inhaling deep while his finger slowly presses inward. “Would you blow me?” **  
  
** **“** Honestly, babe,” Sebastian tosses back as lightly as he can, given that he’s about two minutes from coming in his jeans, “you’d be lucky if I really did get as far as kissing you before I started fucking you.” **  
  
** _He has to tread water when he finally stops, so far out that when he lifts his arms over his head and exhales to force himself back under, he can’t get far enough down to even let his toes scrape the sea floor. There’s no one anywhere close to him when he surfaces, either, people like specks in the distance, or maybe ants. Good. Kurt rolls onto his back in a float, heaving out a sigh of contentment as he idly kicks his feet to propel his body back to the shore, slow and lazy._ **  
  
** _His mind is less lazy, bringing up and turning over the question of Sebastian in a puzzling loop of wistful longing and wariness._ **  
  
** _Kurt knows that sooner than he’d like, this is going to have to stop. He’s starting to get increasingly irritated emails from Tina, pointing out that she can’t design the spring line by herself. Rachel sends texts sometimes, her words as ever managing to seem wistful and passive aggressive all at once –_ I miss you, if you don’t come home soon you’ll miss my next show opening **–** _and even his father called and left a voicemail on his cell phone the night before while they were at dinner._ **  
  
** _It’s been an unforgettable, unregrettable several weeks. But as he pointed out himself, it does have an expiration date._ **  
  
** _He should probably figure out what that date is before he gets in over his head._ **  
  
** **“** Kurt.” Sebastian will  _not_ beg, but Jesus fucking  _Christ_ he can’t take any more. Not another minute of Kurt’s little groans as he fucks himself on his fingers, pushing them up into himself with a rhythm as lazy as the hand on his cock. Not another minute of half-lidded eyes and hitching breaths, not another minute of hips flexing up, of toes curling into the soft white sheets. **  
  
** _Fuck this._ **  
  
**Sebastian is half blind with lust as he lurches up out of the chair, yanking his t-shirt up over his head as he stumbles towards the bed and Kurt’s wide eyed surprise. And he doesn’t bother to take his jeans off, just rips the button fly open and pulls his painfully hard cock out as he climbs up the mattress. One hand curls around a happily convenient condom packet even as he’s kicking his sandals off, the wrapper a metallic tick on his tongue as he uses his teeth to rip it open. **  
  
**The fist-fucking doesn’t happen, but he does get to wreck Kurt’s mouth in a kiss that rips the breath out of both of them seconds before he’s got the condom on and his cock pushing hard into the slick, ready heat of Kurt’s ass. **  
  
** _Floating out in the sun-warmed sea, Kurt thinks, and at the same time, he doesn’t, really._ **  
  
** _He admits that sometimes, yes, he’s started to wonder what_ more _might be like. If it could even be remotely possible. There are moments when it’s appealing, even feels natural - when he’s running his fingers through Sebastian’s hair when he feels troubled, or when he kisses Sebastian goodbye without thinking twice._ **  
  
** _Sometimes, too, he thinks it could go both ways, wonders at the things Sebastian does and says. But never too hard, never too close, it’s easy to dismiss as imagining things because come on, it’s Sebastian. Kurt’s pretty sure that whatever they have going on is the longest Sebastian’s stuck around anyone, and he’s equally sure it has to be in part because it does have to end. Commitment without limits has never struck him as Sebastian’s style._ **  
  
** _The fact, of course, that they have incredible sex is also undoubtedly a huge part of the draw for Sebastian. It certainly is for Kurt. It would almost be worth trying to coax Sebastian into the anathema of a – horror! - serious relationship, actually, it’s so good._ **  
  
** _If he felt like he deserved it._ **  
  
**His jeans are tight around his thighs as he drives into Kurt, his breath almost sobbing out with each thrust. He’s lasting longer than he thought he would, helped by the condom, but Kurt sounds like he’s seconds away from going over. “Fuck,” he babbles in a hiss, his fingernails sinking into Sebastian’s back while he arches his neck up for kisses. “Fuck, yes, give it -” **  
  
** **“** Don’t come,” Sebastian orders suddenly, thrusting in one hard motion and _stopping,_ pushing himself back up to enjoy the look of frustrated shock on Kurt’s face. “Oh, what, two can’t play this game?” **  
  
**Kurt’s hands, now resting on Sebastian’s forearms, flex and then sharp little crescents burn bright spots of pain into his wrists. “I could kill you.” **  
  
** **“** You won’t.” As slowly as he can manage – not terribly, given how close he actually is for real now – Sebastian starts moving his hips in idle circles, the buttons on his jeans pressing red spots into the back of Kurt’s thigh. He feels as high as Kurt seems to be, the dizzying tingle of delirium catching and infecting his thoughts. “You made me wait. I’m just trying to play fair.” **  
  
**A harsh laugh barks out of Kurt’s mouth. “Do you even know the meaning of the word?” **  
  
** **“** About as well as you do,” Sebastian smirks, enjoying himself to the hilt. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when you can come. It won’t take long.” **  
  
** _Because that’s the catch._ **  
  
** _The specter of Blaine is always there, hurt and confused. There’s no way to forget the look on his face when Kurt finally had to sit him down and say,_ I can’t do this to you anymore. **  
  
** _Or the answering,_ Until right now I didn’t know you were doing anything to me. **  
  
** _Kurt rolls and dives down under the water’s surface like it’s possible to outrun memories and ghosts. The deeper he pushes down, the cooler and darker it gets, the more it feels like a different world. A world where he doesn’t beat himself to death with blame for what happened. A world with possibility, where he can throw off his self-imposed burden._ **  
  
** _There’s a little voice at the back of his mind, one he hasn’t heard in years. A voice that’s been getting louder since Dublin, a voice that keeps insisting,_ the real world is actually like that, if you let it. **  
  
** _His lungs feel like they could burst, but he keeps swimming, relishing the ache in his muscles and head and chest._ How can it be when I can’t forget what I’ve done? **  
  
** _That heartbreakingly familiar chuckle._ No one said you had to forget. You just have to forgive. **  
  
**Who? ****  
  
 _There’s a flicker in the water ahead, and he can almost see Blaine, a younger Blaine, a Blaine who ran, whose self-loathing Kurt knows nearly as well as his own._ Yourself _, teenage Blaine says, a soft warm smile of forgiveness on his imagined face before he winks out and leaves only his voice behind._ Before it drowns you _._

_And then Kurt is alone again with his surprise and a heart that’s loosening from a knot that had been tied too tight, too long._

In this, at least, he can be true to his word. **  
  
**Neither one of them can speak now, they can only grin into each other’s mouths, happy and cocky and hyperactive as they bump around and try to kiss between Sebastian’s thrusts. It’s _not_ long, he can feel the heat climbing hand over hand up his spine, the clench of Kurt around his cock, the _energy_ between them both. **  
  
**It’s _good,_ it’s so damn  _good_ , Sebastian loves it, loves these moments, this feeling, the heat and sweat and laughter and the knowledge that two people can never be closer than this. It’s never anything he’s ever looked for and now he has no idea how he can ever let it go. **  
  
**Never mind, doesn’t matter, no he’s coming, coming hard and it’s all he can do to choke out, “Kurt – come – please -” **  
  
** _When he surfaces, he shoots like an arrow out of the water and bobs for a moment, pushing his hair back off of his face, wiping the salt water out of his eyes. His fingernails dig into his palms when his fists clench tight, opening little wounds that the salt burns but he doesn’t really feel. What he does feel is the ring that hangs so heavy around his neck even when he isn’t wearing it. Even now, it’s way back on the shore, yet Kurt almost feels it dark and weighty against the skin over his heart, pushing him down into the water._ **  
  
** _For the first time, he’s seized with the irresistible urge to push back._ **  
  
** **“** Didn’t you just say yourself that both of you forgot the anniversary?” **  
  
** _Sebastian’s question from that intense first night in Ireland is like the domino at the front of a line._ **  
  
** **“** Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you do, nature’s gonna take its course.” **  
  
** _There’s the second domino._ **  
  
** **“** Two years is a long damn time to hate yourself that much.” **  
  
** _The line starts to fall._ **  
  
** _Turning around, Kurt reaches out and begins to stroke for shore with a resolve as terrifying as it is welcome._ **  
  
**They disengage and Kurt winks playfully before rolling off the bed and heading to the bathroom. “Sorry for wrecking your plan,” Sebastian calls after him as he yanks off his jeans. **  
  
** **“** No, you’re not,” is the floating, cheerfully sarcastic reply and, okay, no, he’s not. Sebastian can’t help the grin he feels stretching across his face as he absently trails his fingers over his chest, drawing formless pictures on his skin while he comes down from their shared high. **  
  
**He doesn’t really know all of what happened to Kurt out in the sea today. Something big and profound, no doubt – that’s obvious from the aftermath, the hours long stretch of time with Kurt humming and bouncing and being a _fucking tease_ at dinner,  _God_ , he was maddening in the way that Sebastian likes best, all his little innuendos and sarcastic cracks – but he feels like it’s too soon to ask, and maybe he wouldn’t have the right anyway. **  
  
**It’s enough to know it has to do with Blaine. **  
  
** **“** _…eh? Kurt?” Sebastian wakes up blinking in confusion when Kurt drops back down to their shared towel, dripping wet and getting sand everywhere._ **  
  
** _Kurt doesn’t look at him. “I need to do something.”_ **  
  
** _Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Sebastian turn over and sit up. “Sure. Okay. Need my help?”_ **  
  
** **“** _No.” Reaching for the beach bag, he digs around in it until he gets his fingers on the cool metal chain. The ring is never, ever left behind, not even in a hotel room safe. He always has it in a pocket, or his wallet, or his satchel. Always near, always burning with memories and guilt. “Well. Moral support, maybe.”_ **  
  
** **“** _Sure, okay,” Sebastian says again, looking cautious and confused. “Whatever you need.”_ **  
  
** _Kurt slips the smooth platinum band over his index finger and rubs it, spinning it in a slow circle around his knuckle. Things are fitting together in his mind, slotting into place like a key in an ignition, and the giddiness of his rawly new freedom is starting to bubble up through his veins, flooding his body with an electric buzz._ **  
  
** _He has ideas. Plans. Things he wants to do._ **  
  
** **“** I want to do something in the next city,” Kurt announces as he flops back into the bed, completely adorable and irresistible with the sunshine beam of his smile. “Something new.” **  
  
** **“** Aw, is the bloom off the rose already? I’m hurt.” But he’s not, really, no, more than anything he’s fascinated and pleased to see this Kurt who seems to have somehow written himself a whole new lease on his life. It makes him even more intriguing than before, in a way. “What do you want?” **  
  
**Kurt’s smile turns impish, crinkling his nose a little while his eyes sparkle. “Trust me to surprise you?” **  
  
** **“** You seem to be on a roll with it lately, so why not?” With anyone else it would be a decision he considers reckless, but Sebastian  _has_ come to trust Kurt in these last weeks. “Will I like it?” **  
  
**Rolling onto his back, Kurt stretches out, wiggling his toes and fingers, the smile on his face beaming brighter yet more mysterious by the second. “Oh, I think so.” **  
  
** _Feeling lighter than he has in much too long, Kurt lunges over and tackles Sebastian to the towel, enjoying the bubbly feel of joy in his mouth as he sucks his lover into a greedy, selfish kiss. “Kurt,” Sebastian laughs, pulling back for a second, eyes bright as he looks Kurt over. “You feeling okay?”_ **  
  
** **“** _I absolutely am.” He feels high, sharper than the pot-high of Amsterdam, dizzy and whirling. Dipping his head back down, he holds Sebastian’s face between his hands and brings their lips together again, dragging his teeth along Sebastian’s bottom lip when he pulls back. “Oh, yes.”_ **  
  
** **“** _You, uh, heh…you don’t really need moral support to make out with me, Kurt. I think you’ve kind of got that down.” Sebastian’s tone is wry as he pushes himself upright, bringing his own hand up to lay it along Kurt’s jawline, his thumb stroking Kurt’s cheekbone. He has his familiar amused, skeptical look on his face but far back in his eyes Kurt can see genuine concern – and that shadowy something that makes him wonder again if the_ more _might maybe work both ways, at least a little… “What’s going on?”_ **  
  
** _He shoves down the flight of fiery butterflies that ignites in his stomach –_ this isn’t serious _, he reminds himself,_ it’s Sebastian, Sebastian doesn’t do serious, besides it’s enough right now to be free **–** _and nods, trailing his hands down along Sebastian’s warm shoulders and arms, slick with suntan lotion and gritty with sand. “Nothing. Everything.” One more burning kiss leaves them both breathless. “You’ll see. I’ll show you.”_

Sebastian is half-asleep when Kurt takes off a few days later, still almost vibrating with excitement as they kiss goodbye. He hasn’t elaborated on whatever has him so amped, and by now Sebastian is all but dying of a curiosity he’s having to work harder and harder to hold back.

The message lands on his phone later the same afternoon while he’s poking at a plate of  _mizithropitakia_ , too wound up to eat. **  
  
** _Picture Message From Kurt:_ _ **  
  
**_ _Message From Kurt: So when you get here…I was wondering if you’d like to explore the old adage, ‘three’s company’?_ **  
  
**Does that mean what Sebastian thinks it means? He reads it again, and again, and it does seem fairly plain. Huh. ****  
  
Of all the things he ever even vaguely expected out of Kurt Hummel, that…nope, that had not at all been one of them.

This  _is_  a surprise.


	10. The Lights That Stop Me Turn To Stone

_Message From Sebastian: Seriously, are we even TRYING any more?_

_Message From Kurt: Not really. I want you here. Are you on the plane?_

_Message From Sebastian: Jesus, yes, Mr. Pushy. The flight attendant is giving me a dirty look AGAIN._

_Message From Kurt: Don’t get a cab. A driver will meet you at the airport to bring you to me._

_Message From Sebastian: BRING me to you? What am I, a package?_

_Message From Kurt: You do happen to HAVE a package that I like. See you in a few hours!_

_Sure enough, there is a driver waiting for Sebastian at Fiumicino, and oh, boy, Kurt must be in a playful mood, because the driver’s sign says ‘Timon’._

_Message From Sebastian: Very funny._

_Message From Kurt: :)_

Sebastian leans over to get close to Kurt’s ear, pitching his voice to be heard over the throbbing bass that fills the club. He’s distracted for a moment by the bodies writhing on the dance floor, but a shake of his head snaps him back to remember what he wanted. “Forgot to ask earlier. Why Italy, again?”

Kurt shifts around to pick his drink up from the bar, his shoulders lifting in a fluid shrug as he brings the glass to his lips. “Besides the obvious? I like Italy. I like the food, I like the architecture, I like the…” He trails off and his gaze fixes on a distant corner, where a pair of dark liquid eyes caught in the dim light can be seen to drop a wink at Kurt, where full lips can be just seen to turn up in a sweet little smile of invitation. “I just really like Italy.”

All Sebastian can do is nod blankly, caught as he is by the same eyes. His mouth is dry. “Yeah, uh, me, me too.”

_Sebastian’s only been to Rome a time or two in his life, and not at all recently. He doesn’t recognize anything about the streets the driver is slowly traversing. It’s okay. He’s enjoying the ride._

****   
  


_There’s a lot he likes about Italy – about Europe in general. The colors, the tastes, the juxtaposition of the very old and the very new._ There’s so much history here _, he thinks, and then laughs, because appropriate much?_

__

_Message From Sebastian: What are we doing here, anyway?_

_Message From Kurt: Well, you’ll see._

_Message From Sebastian: You could at least tell me where this guy’s taking me. I can’t figure out if I’m in a Scorsese flick or a Woody Allen joint._

_Message From Kurt: It could be the ghost of Nora Ephron going in a new direction._

_Message From Sebastian: It’s not too late for me to turn around and go back to the airport. I like you, but take that back._

“If we’re doing this,” Sebastian had warned, glancing over his shoulder at the start of the night, “you’re doing the picking.”

Consternation went in a flash across Kurt’s face. “Why me?”

“Because this was your idea, and besides…I’m not as picky as I’m pretty sure you’re going to be.” He’d rolled back his sleeves and turned to fully face Kurt, who was leaning in the doorway of the hotel room bathroom. “And because I’ve never seen you try to pick someone up for a one night stand before and I’m definitely sure it’s going to be hilarious.”

Kurt’s chin had come up and his lips pursed as he obviously struggled with laughter and indignation. Laughter finally won out. “At least you’re honest,” he’d sighed as he rolled his eyes and pushed off of the door jamb, sauntering back into the bedroom in a way that made Sebastian want to tackle him to the bed and kiss him until he let go this crazy plan of his and agreed to stay in all night, just the two of them.

Now, Sebastian glances up at the mezzanine that encircles the dance room of the club they’re in, and he just watches Kurt in the flashing strobe lights. Kurt, who is talking to the man with the pretty eyes from earlier. Kurt’s arm is stretched along the low wall, a smile tilting the corners of his mouth as he talks. When he raises his glass for a sip, his eyebrows go up and his lips curve further, and Sebastian knows that this one, he is the one.

Tall – maybe as tall as Sebastian? Hard to tell from downstairs. But built, not porn star built, more like male model built, in exactly the way he likes to fantasize over sometimes and is interested to discover Kurt might, too. Thick dark hair that is just perfect for grabbing in tight handfuls, a slight scruff along the jaw and chin that would feel so good against sensitive skin.

Pretty, pretty, pretty mouth. It is neither difficult nor unpleasant to imagine it wrapped around Kurt’s dick, not at all.

Sebastian chuckles as Kurt sets his glass down and turns to stretch his arms out as he glances down at the lower level, seeking and searching.

Their eyes meet and Kurt nods once, with a smile. Sebastian shakes his head briefly in amusement and then smiles back with a nod of affirmation.

_Not that he really means that._

__

_As much as he keeps trying to bury it until it can’t be remembered in his lifetime, Sebastian can’t shake the idea of being with Kurt. Really being with him. Yes, it’s a bad idea to wander this path, yes, Kurt has made it so clear that this is finite, that it’s ending and probably soon. No, he hasn’t said he even has a thousandth of an ounce of the same confusing feelings that Sebastian’s been fighting for weeks, no, Sebastian still hasn’t really been able to make sense of why he would want anything like this when he never has in his life, not ever._

_It doesn’t seem to matter. He can’t turn it off._

They don’t even make it to the hotel before Alessandro is mouthing at Kurt’s throat. Kurt is snugged up between Sebastian’s spread legs in the cramped back seat of their cab, the first few buttons of his shirt undone to let pale skin gleam in the moonlight slanting in through the windows. His fingers are knotted into Alessandro’s hair, breathless moans sending puffs of air to tickle Sebastian’s ear as Sebastian’s hand slides between Kurt and Alessandro to knead at Kurt’s cock where it strains so hard against the prison of his tight jeans.

There’s an unspoken accord between Sebastian and Alessandro, one conveyed in coded glances and the subtle upward shift of lips, in short nods and careful gestures.  _Make this about him_ , is the contract to which they have quite willingly bound themselves, and which they are fulfilling with reckless abandon.

A part of Sebastian – one he will deny exists – is jealous that Alessandro is here. The feeling that he is a distraction and interference is strong; though physically he’s anything but, to Sebastian it seems a little like he’s stepping between the two of them.

But one look at Kurt’s eyes all sleepy and dark in arousal, skin flushed and warm, well, it’s worth it then, isn’t it, to be able to step aside and watch that happen?

At the very least, it’s an incredibly stimulating sight.

_Kurt is gorgeous in the late summer sunset that splashes the piazza._

__

Not fair _, Sebastian thinks, taking in the soft, worn jeans clinging snugly to Kurt’s ass, the supple leather knee high boots that hug calves he’s tasted every inch of, the snowy white button down, everything whispering_ touch me, touch me, touch me _and it takes all of Sebastian’s self control to get out of the car without tripping over his feet – or running to grab Kurt and never ever let go._

__

_“It’s not enough to look like one of Michaelangelo’s sculptures, you really have to do your best to outdo the masters?” he calls out as he strolls over, hands in his own jeans pockets to help surreptitiously pull the heavy fabric away from his slowly stirring cock. “Seems unfair. They’re not here to defend their work.”_

__

_“Sadly, they’re not here to pay tribute to me, either,” Kurt sighs, a playful smile taking most of the conceit out of his words. Not that he doesn’t, of course, deserve to be a little conceited – he’s being ogled by tourists and natives, men and women alike, with varying degrees of subtlety. Sebastian wants to take him to bed right the fuck now._

__

_He manages to refrain. “So, the Trevi fountain.” Indeed, this is where he’s been dropped off, a plaza thronged with tourists tossing coins into the famous landmark, making their wishes and sending out their hopes to return to Rome._

_Kurt faces the Palazzo Poli, a smile as bright as the sun and thin as a ghost whispering across his face. “People come here to say goodbye to Rome.”_

__

_“They come here to tell Rome they want to come back.” Uncertainty sets Sebastian rocking a little on his feet as he tries to follow Kurt’s train of thought._

__

_“True.” Kurt steps back and nods, and his smile tips just a little into his knowing smirk. “I…want to turn that tradition on its head a little. Do something different.”_

Kurt and Sebastian’s room is tiny, the bed definitely better suited for two than three – unless the three are wound up and tangled together, golden skin against pale skin against dark, arms and legs entwined every which way as the wet sounds of kisses mingle with breathy, helpless groans in the humid air streaming through the open window.

They are together at Kurt’s throat, mouthing hot kisses into the skin that bloom into flushed patches of red-violet as soon as they move their lips along to new places to taste. Hands roam – across Kurt’s chest here, dipping in and trailing along his inner thigh there, stopping just short of brushing knuckles against the tight skin of his balls, shying away from touching his cock.

He’s been wound tight since well before they’d left the bar, as Sebastian quite intimately knows, maybe since Alessandro had agreed to meet Sebastian and decide whether or not he wanted in. Maybe even before that, maybe at first glance.

Not that Sebastian faults Kurt for that for even one hot second. A man would have to be blind to miss Alessandro’s many charms, and frankly, Sebastian’s not sure even that would guarantee immunity.

Their eyes meet as their fingers intertwine over Kurt’s stomach, and they both smile with an unhideable satisfaction while they move their hands to clasp together around his straining, erect cock. When they begin to stroke, a helpless growl of a groan is pulled out of Kurt’s throat, raw and hot and almost more exciting than an actual orgasm might be.

Almost. Sebastian feels his dick hard against Kurt’s thigh, knows it’s that little bit sticky at the tip from his arousal, wants to bury himself deep and make him groan over and over and over.

_Sebastian knows what Kurt’s pulling out of his pocket before the last rays of the sun glint off of it. “Kurt…”_

__

_“I want to say – no, I_ need  _to say goodbye.” He curls his fingers around the burnished platinum ring, the silver chain dripping from his palm like water. “People come here, they turn their back on this fountain and they throw their coins over their shoulder and every hope they have follows it in.”_

__

_It’s not coming together. “Right…”_

_“I’m facing it. I’m going to watch this go in because I don’t want what it represents back. I’m going to say goodbye and I’m going to let go.” Kurt’s face sets with that familiar determination, jaw twitching a little with the resolution it represents. “You’re right.”_

__

_“I am?” He almost wants to ask Kurt to repeat that. It’s not something he hears often._

__

_“Two years is far, far too long to hate myself.” Sebastian watches Kurt swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the long column of his throat. “I haven’t felt this alive in so long. This has followed me around…and I didn’t know how heavy it was until I didn’t want to carry it anymore.” He opens his fingers to glance down at the ring. “I’m tired, Sebastian. So…just, tired. Guilt is exhausting. Why did I think I was supposed to hate myself forever?”_

_He shakes his head, even though Kurt isn’t facing him. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m pretty sure self-hatred has always been a talent of yours, but I’ve never understood it.” Which is a lie. No one understands self-hatred better, of course._

“I want to be inside,” Sebastian whispers to Alessandro while the Italian is mouthing kisses along the inside of Kurt’s knee. If he’s not going to have Kurt for much longer, he wants the lion’s share of what he gets. He wants to be the one who makes Kurt fall to pieces from the inside out, to be the one who pulls that very specific low sigh of ecstasy out of him.

Alessandro is more than welcome to aid in the cause, but Sebastian wants to keep what he likes best to himself for as long as he can. That’s why he’s the one knuckle deep inside of Kurt, twisting his fingers and reducing his lover to incoherent, begging moans.

Selfish, he knows, but Sebastian is well acquainted with his selfishness and has no problem owning it even when Kurt isn’t involved.

A languid shrug from Alessandro’s smooth, tanned shoulder. “ _Si_ ,” he replies, the agreement a puff of air against Kurt’s warm and sensitive skin that makes him squirm under their hands. “ _Preservativi_?”

Sebastian is never sure if he should be proud or a little embarrassed at how many languages he knows the word  _condom_  in. “One sec.”

It won’t take him long to get what they need, and Alessandro can do an admirable job of keeping Kurt occupied in the few moments required. Sebastian raises an eyebrow at the selection of piña colada and cherry flavored condoms – perfect for getting blowjobs from strangers, or giving them - in the flap pocket of Kurt’s satchel. They hadn’t been there in Thessaloniki.  _Pretty confident in my agreement, were you?_  He has to chuckle at it. Like agreement was strictly required – with their distinct lack of formal arrangement, Kurt could have wandered off on his own and picked up a pretty boy without Sebastian being involved in the equation at all.

He’s glad, though, that it didn’t work out like that. This is pretty clearly something that Kurt for some reason very much wanted, and for all that Sebastian is still unsettled by the feeling of having someone metaphorically between them still, he’s also oddly satisfied in being chosen to participate in it with Kurt.

He slips back into the bed, dropping a pile of condom packets on the side table and sliding one of the flavored ones into Alessandro’s fingers before shifting to press his body up against Kurt’s restless, wanting one. “What do you want, babe?”

“Everything,” Kurt moans, hips bucking into the air to try and entice Alessandro to do more than trace the skin of his cock with long, teasing fingers. Sebastian’s never seen him so hard, so  _needy_ , but then he’s never been this teased and tormented with foreplay in all the time they’ve been traveling together. He’s so pretty this way, flushed and squirming and little staccato moans, a boneless tumble of  _need_  and  _want_  and  _now, please, now_.

“Can you sit up for me?” Sebastian nods to Alessandro, who sits back and reaches out his arms to pull Kurt up so that Sebastian can slip underneath, kneading the mouthwatering muscle of Kurt’s ass. He watches as they meet in a long, deep kiss, Kurt spilling that special moan into Alessandro’s pretty mouth as Sebastian spreads him open and begins to press his own achingly hard cock inside.

_It’s not truly meant to make Kurt laugh, but it does, and with a damp sniffle that’s the first indication that Kurt’s also tearing up at this. “He’s actually happy now. I’ve known that for months – the New Directions grapevine is unsurpassed in its ability to spread information to all corners whether you want to know something or not. He’s all right. Maybe he’s even forgiven me. But I kept hanging on…”_

__

_It seems like it would be too intrusive to touch Kurt’s shoulder, so Sebastian keeps hanging back, just watching and waiting. “You’re going to…”_

__

_“Let go. I’m going to let go. I_ have _to let go.” Long, pale fingers close again around the ring, hiding it from view. “This is the last thing.”_

_Difficult as it is, Sebastian manages to squash the little part of him that’s jumping up and down and shrieking_ Yes! Yes! Yes!  _He’s not naïve enough to think this means he should give way to hope._

__

_So tempting, though._

__

_Kurt’s closed fist comes up to his lips and his eyes flutter shut, eyelashes a shadow on his cheeks as he presses a kiss to his hand. Sebastian barely hears his murmured, “Goodbye,” before the ring is in the air, a shining glint against the backdrop of the elaborate palace for just one bright instant._

_And then it’s gone. It seems like it should have more drama to it, but as he considers, Sebastian realizes that Kurt didn’t even have the energy for that any more. He was too relieved by giving himself permission to let go._

As Kurt sinks down over Sebastian, Alessandro is there to hold him up, to catch Kurt’s hitching breaths in his mouth, to trail wet kisses down Kurt’s chest as Sebastian begins to push up and thrust as slowly as he can, holding back to try and make this last as long as possible.

He sees Kurt’s fingers fist into the white sheets, crumpling the linens in white knuckled hands when Alessandro dips down and sheathes Kurt’s cock in the condom. Sly dark eyes flick up and smile into Kurt’s wondering face seconds before he tilts down and his mouth around Kurt makes wonder shift into mindless pleasure. His head falls back, mouth open and eyelashes fluttering shut to fan across high, flushed cheekbones.

Sebastian thinks that if he ever has to choose one memory to take with him to the grave, it’s the picture of Kurt’s face in this moment. Given up to pleasure, no tension in sight – Sebastian’s fingers grip hard enough into Kurt’s waist that the marks are going to be there for a while and his hips roll up in a push that rocks the bed and makes them all groan.

It should be an awkward position – it is, a little – but that’s overridden by the tight warmth Sebastian’s sinking into, by the look on Kurt’s face as Sebastian and Alessandro settle into a rhythm that slings him between overwhelming pleasure and relentless ecstasy. A tilt of his head lets Sebastian peek between Kurt’s body and his arm to see Alessandro’s ass shifting as he rocks his cock against the bedsheets, to catch a glimpse of his face as his eyes droop closed and his pretty, pretty mouth stretches around Kurt’s cock, thick and hard and the latex wet with saliva that glitters in the dim lamplight.

Oh, he’s not going to last much longer. That foreplay had been as much a torment to him as the other two.

The slippery feel of a condom probing at his hole is a surprise, and Sebastian’s eyes fly open to see Alessandro gazing inquiringly at him, his fingers carefully covered as he slips them over the entrance there, waiting for permission.

“Yes.” It’s simple, carried on a moan he can’t hold back, one that uncurls with gutteral animalism when Alessandro’s fingers push gently inside, matching the rhythm of his mouth on Kurt, of Sebastian’s hips as he buries himself inside of Kurt over and over…

Alessandro picks up on the speed increase of Sebastian’s thrusts and rocks into it, bobbing his head down to take almost all of Kurt into his mouth and throat – and that’s what makes Kurt come completely undone, what makes the fingers of his right hand come up and grip fingernails into Sebastian’s knee, what makes a gasp two steps from a pleasured sob choke out of his mouth and his back arches, his other hand scrabbling to clutch at the sheets and keep him upright as he tumbles over the edge.

And he takes Sebastian with him.

_Now he feels okay with stepping up and placing a careful hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Are you going to be all right?”_

__

_“No.” Kurt shakes his head before casting a lopsided smile back at Sebastian. “I_ am  _all right. More all right than I’ve been in a very long time, honestly.”_

__

_He’s relaxing under Sebastian’s touch and gaze, standing taller and just radiating peace. It’s enviable, makes Sebastian wonder what he’d have to do to achieve that kind of comfort with himself. Makes him realize he wants it, wants at last to work towards it instead of running from everything. And any other day he’d sit down and turn that over in his mind, examine it and try to start working it out, but today is Kurt’s day. “You could have done this before I got here. Why wait for me?”_

__

_“I told you in Greece. Moral support.” Kurt wraps his arms around himself and smiles softly into the darkening sky. “I didn’t want to be alone. Not for this. I…it’s a whole new chapter of my life, Sebastian._ Someone  _needed to witness it.” A chuckle puffs out. “And as you well know, I always did love a good audience.”_

Good deeds deserve a very most excellent reward.

As soon as Sebastian can breathe and sit up he’s got Alessandro laughing as he tumbles over onto his back, laughter that becomes a long groan as Sebastian whips another condom down over his rock hard dick and lowers his mouth to clench tight, long slow swirls of his well-practiced tongue stroking at the ridges and valleys as he sucks.

Maybe there’s a little bit of competitive “I’ve got a mouth as good as yours” going on, yeah, okay, but mostly Sebastian really does want to reward a job well done. Well. And he doesn’t want Alessandro’s cock going to waste, not that thick, satisfyingly heavy and very nice dick with the veins and the fat, delicious head – hey, just because he’s suddenly found himself dangerously attached to Kurt doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate a hot man who was kind of brought home for both of them, when you think about it.

Dimly, he’s aware of Kurt having crawled up and draped himself over his back, nipping and sucking kisses as he reaches around and wraps a lazy hand around Sebastian’s cock. He doesn’t seem able to speak, only to rasp harsh breaths against Sebastian’s skin and slip his slowly stiffening erection between the cheeks of Sebastian’s ass.

Sebastian pulls off with a pop and glances over his shoulder. “You’re incredibly distracting.”

Kurt only tilts his chin forward and tightens his grip. “Make him come.”

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes, Sebastian Smythe is very good at obeying orders.

_The quip, delivered with all of Kurt’s trademark casual insolence, breaks the last lingering tension like a held breath, and Sebastian laughs back. “Fair enough,” he acknowledges, squeezing Kurt’s shoulder one last time before dropping his hand away. “So now what? Most people do this on the last day of their trip to Rome.”_

__

_“Yes. I only intended to stay one day here. I have my plane ticket for tomorrow booked already, all hail Vivian.” Kurt turns and slips forward, knotting hands into Sebastian’s shirt and pulling them so close a breath of air couldn’t have gotten between them without a fight._ His eyes should be outlawed _, Sebastian thinks, transfixed by that blue-green ocean gazing up at him through a fan of eyelashes. Kurt’s eyes are dark with invitation and promise. “And I wanted your…assistance. For one more thing.”_

_“Did you?” It’s difficult to get the words out, given that Sebastian’s throat and mouth have suddenly gone drier than a desert and there is no blood at all left anywhere near the vicinity of his brain._

__

_“Mm.” The hum vibrates Kurt’s chest against Sebastian’s and only the fists in his shirt are holding Sebastian up at this point – his knees are like jelly, allowing Kurt to walk him backwards to the waiting car. “Truth or dare?”_

_It takes next to no thought to answer. “Dare.”_

__

_“Oh, good.” Kurt’s eyes sparkle as his smirk makes Sebastian think very, very dirty thoughts. “I hoped you’d say that. I’ll tell you about it on the way to the hotel…”_

“So what was that about?” It’s just the two of them now, facing each other on the bed. Alessandro had departed with excellent grace and the suggestion that they look him up if ever they’re in Rome together again…or separately, whichever happened to happen.

Kurt shrugs. “It’s not my usual sort of thing…”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have…” Sebastian trails off, knowing that Kurt knows how he would have finished that. “So, what, fresh start, new tricks to try?”

“Basically, yes.” He seems unaware of his fingers crawling out to spider absently along Sebastian’s arm and chest. “If I have to finish up this trip, I wanted to end it on a really high note and do something I’ve always wanted to try but never had the nerve.” A chuckle. “Go big before I go home, I guess?”

Ice water feels like it’s replacing all the blood in Sebastian’s veins. He steels himself so as to not betray the disappointment and shock. He knew it had to come, that it was around every corner they rounded…is this it? Is it here? He doesn’t know what to do. How to stop it. If it can be stopped. He operates on autopilot, feigning a casual coolness he in no way feels. “Is this it, then?”

Silence, cold and terrible as he watches Kurt’s face work in thought. “I think so. One more city and…and then I think I have to go.” Sigh. Blink. Eyes that go distant and lips that lose all trace of a mischievous smile. “I don’t want it to end.”

It takes everything Sebastian has to not grab Kurt’s hand and say, “It doesn’t have to.”

_He wakes up alone, to a vibrating phone and a sinking sensation in his stomach._

__

_Picture Message From Kurt:_

_Message From Kurt: How’s this for the end of the road?_


	11. This Is The Distance (And This Is My Game Face)

_Message From Kurt: I don’t understand. We have one night and you decide to take the train to get here?_

_Sebastian lets the phone fall to his lap and stares blankly at the passing scenery. There’s no answer he can give to that, not one that won’t give him away, at least._

The sooner I get there, the sooner this ends.

I’m putting off the moment I have to watch you leave.

Why would I want the last night I ever spend with you to come any faster?

_He’s already trying to build his walls back up, to be aloof and untouchable. But he can’t remember, exactly, how to do that now. He does remember why he’s always had them in place - he knows it well, most especially now - but how he got there, he doesn’t know, can’t recall, can’t reach._

_He’s corrupted, now, the iron rusting and the nails corroding._

_And he has no idea what to do with that._

_Pushing down the confusion of anger and desperation that threatens to choke him, Sebastian stuffs his phone into his bag and doesn’t reply._

For Sebastian, each lick of his tongue across one of Kurt’s hipbones is a brand, searing the taste and feel of Kurt into every part of his consciousness. Each press of his fingers into the firm muscle of Kurt’s thigh or waist or ass is a prayer that he remembers every moment of tonight, of every night they’ve had.

Kurt memorizes the vibration of the sighs and moans that rattle Sebastian’s chest, commits the feel of the weight of Sebastian’s body to the deepest recesses of his mind so he can call it up and dust it off whenever he wants. He sinks his teeth into the golden brown skin of Sebastian’s shoulder, the marks of his bite raising in a purple-red relief that Kurt wishes were a tattoo, so that every time Sebastian looked into a mirror, he would remember everything.

_After an hour of staring at his phone, Kurt gives up and tosses it down on the nightstand, flopping into the pillows of his bed with an exasperated sigh._

_He’s been riding high on adrenaline and exhilaration for days now, plunging himself into the euphoria of a new life unshackled from his past. Plans, emails, designs, his brain and his phone have been on high alert for a week, constantly buzzing, Tina, Rachel, his father, everyone. Kurt Hummel has not felt so alive with purpose in quite some time, and he feels fairly justified in letting it go to his head a little._

_But not so much that he hasn’t noticed Sebastian rather uncharacteristically trailing in his wake, supportive but bemused and seemingly overwhelmed by Kurt in a way that sits oddly in Kurt’s mind. Even in Rome, even with Alessandro, he’d been present yet absent, allowing his body to enthusiastically participate - and oh, how it did participate - but taking some part of himself Kurt doesn’t understand out of the equation. It had been incredible, but…it hadn’t been what they’d had before._

_Probably just as well, Kurt figures._

_What they’d had before Rome was why he was leaving, even though he didn’t want to._

_It’s just that he had to get out before he couldn’t anymore._

Each one tries to suck the other’s breath away and replace it with his own, tries to push every cell of his being in to permeate the other’s body. They struggle and strive and groan, working desperately to leave the invisible yet indelible marks of their presences on each other’s.

Fingers slide through thick hair and pull, making gasps and laughter spill and mingle across lip and skin and tongue. Noses trace collarbones, palms cup biceps, breath slips and slides across stomachs, tongues dip into bellybuttons.

Lips open wide to slide over the straining head of an erect cock, the salt sweet taste of the come beading at the tip leaving a tingling taste across the palate at the top of the mouth that enfolds it. Long moans of satisfaction fill the air along with the scents of sex and sandalwood and quiet pleas for more, oh, god, yes, more.

_Sebastian doesn’t have the knowledge or energy to fight Kurt’s decision._

_He doesn’t even like that he wants to._

_But he is not willing to put himself on the line any more than he has during this whole thing. It snuck up on him, got him attached without him even knowing it, and there is a small part of himself that very much resents that weakness._

_The larger part is terrified that if he exposes his weakness any more, it can be used against him. And he’s gotten himself into trouble with that in other ways already. Tied himself up with ropes more binding than whatever this is he feels for Kurt._

_Because that’s it, right? If Kurt hadn’t ended it, Sebastian would have had to, wouldn’t he? The thought of an indefinite long distance relationship with Kurt is unbearable, to have but not to hold, to be pushed down firmly under his father’s thumb in Ohio while Kurt lives in New York, no. No. That’s not a life for anyone to live anyway, and he won’t drag Kurt into it._

_He’s run and run and run for as long as he can but now he has nowhere to run anymore, no reason to stop putting off the inevitable. The whole time he’s been in Europe, he’s never come up with any way to get out of his mess with his life intact. Because his life doesn’t really belong to him. Even this vacation from reality he’s been on isn’t his, it’s just a fantasy, just a dream._

_Fuck. He’s always hated waking up._

When he presses the first slick finger inside of Kurt, Sebastian makes sure to have his ear close to Kurt’s lips so that the sweet low groan and sucking gasp of pleasure feels like it is sliding in to wind itself into and all around the crevices and tunnels of Sebastian’s brain, pushing into every fold of memory and making itself at home so he’ll always hear it.

His own mouth is busy at Kurt’s ear, too, teeth nipping sharp into Kurt’s earlobe and peppering his aural memory with a shivery gasp as he pairs the bite with a deft twist of his finger inside where Kurt is tight and warm.

In retaliation, Kurt reaches down with the arm he doesn’t have gripping the headboard behind him, and he wraps his fingers around Sebastian’s cock, and when Sebastian laughs out a groan as he tilts his head back and bites his lip, closing his eyes tight, that’s the face Kurt will see on the backs of his eyelids every time he goes to sleep.

 _You don’t fall in love with Sebastian Smythe, Kurt reasons, because he’s not going to fall in love with you back. That’s just not how he works. Never has been. Kurt remembers like yesterday -_ I met the man of my dreams there.

And are you still together?

No, we broke up about twenty minutes after we met.

_Kurt would be lying if he said there wasn’t a single part of him that hoped for that to have changed. It’s quite a large, part, actually. An alarmingly large part of him has grown comfortable with Sebastian, against all odds and everything he’s ever known about the man. It’s gotten too easy to imagine a life in New York where Sebastian prominently figures - making pasta together in Kurt’s tiny kitchen. Coffee in the mornings before they go to work. Little secret smirks exchanged as Sebastian saunters through the living room in nothing more than a towel and a toothbrush as he goes to answer the door and greet the missionaries who like to bring Kurt pamphlets and try to save the soul he doesn’t really believe in._

_And of course. Of course, there’s the nights. And days. And beds and tables and random bathrooms and anywhere else it would be remotely possible to snatch five minutes or more for hitching breaths and roaming hands and biting kisses._

_They fit. They shouldn’t. Not ever. And yet here they are, about to separate and go back to their ordinary lives and Kurt doesn’t want to do it. He wants more. Wants to see what it might be like to have a maybe-love that’s comfortable in a different way than what he’d had with Blaine. To embrace the unfamiliar and unpredictable. To risk something that could end with a lot more pyrotechnics than the lighthouse art colony dream with Blaine had._

_To…maybe…perhaps…love someone that isn’t Blaine._

_He pulls back from the thought like it’s a raging inferno. Not because of the idea of loving someone other than Blaine - that’s all his life is going to be, now, and he’s finally okay with that - but because of that someone maybe being Sebastian Smythe. Sebastian, who hasn’t given him any solid indication that he’d feel the same or that he’d welcome it if he did._

_The last thing Kurt needs is to read into something that isn’t there. Plenty of other fish in the sea if he’s finally ready to date again. Besides, Sebastian’s life isn’t his own, how could they even make it work? Kurt is in a position to know how horribly wrong long distance relationships can go, and that had been long before he had become a globetrotting fashion designer._

_No. Sebastian will be in Ohio and Kurt in New York and if ever there was an experience Kurt didn’t want to relive, it was that of being separated from the person you most wanted to be around. This is all working out perfectly, really, for something that was a surprise. He needed to get back out there and Sebastian has helped him to do that and now a duly grateful Kurt can go back to his life with the knowledge that he isn’t wrong or broken or a bad person - he’s just human, and he can have relationships with other humans. It’s fine._

_Absolutely fine._

_He sets his clock to wake him up thirty minutes before Sebastian’s train is due in, rolls over, and ignores the tugging sensation of longing in his heart and stomach while he tries to take a nap._

All of Kurt’s world is centered around his cock, around Sebastian’s mouth and throat and tongue, the pull-push-pull of fingers working into and out of his body in rhythm while he has one hand wrapped tight around the top of the headboard and the other tangled hard into Sebastian’s hair. His lip stings where he’s biting down so hard as he desperately fucks himself up into Sebastian’s throat, chasing a horizon he can’t clearly see, wanting to be consumed, swallowed whole, buried in this night and these moments until there’s nothing else, ever.

Sebastian takes it, catalogues the sting on his scalp, the just this side of painful stretch of his lips, the ache in his throat as he lets his head be pushed all the way down to the base of Kurt’s cock. He returns the favor, writing himself onto Kurt’s body with the fingernails of his free hand, tracing red crescents into the skin of Kurt’s back as it arches up off of the sheets and Kurt goes rigid, the fingers in Sebastian’s hair clenching hard while he spills himself down Sebastian’s throat.

Kurt’s voice is ragged at the edges when he drags Sebastian up off his cock, eyes hooded over with pleased exhaustion when he catches his breath and demands, “Now.”

_There has to be a way out of this, Sebastian thinks, staring down at the stack of paperwork on his lap. The paperwork he’s been hauling around in a manila envelope for the last couple of months without telling Kurt. The paperwork that to any other newly minted lawyer would be just about a Holy Grail, a contract binding them to work at a prestigious law firm in the Midwest, guaranteed employment in the profession they’ve worked so hard towards. All law students know that there are more of them in school than there are good jobs for practicing lawyers, and there’s a good chunk of his graduating class at Harvard who would gleefully stab him and then trample his bleeding body for a chance at what he’s holding in his hand. But to him, it’s nothing more than indentured servitude, a mockery of the life he’s discovered he wants, and he’s holding it like someone just handed him a bag of flaming shit._

_The irony of having been a hellraising little asshole of a teenager now actually wanting the law-abiding life he accidentally fell into does not escape him._

_But he doesn’t want_ this _version of it, the version where he doesn’t get to choose how things go. Where he has to give up something he’s shocked to find out he wants in order to live a weak, watered down, faded photocopy of a life. A life with no color or light or fire to it, a life only lightly touched with his own hand, a life formed around him but not including him except in the most peripheral of ways._

 _It’s choking off his will to live just to think about it._ Why do I have to spend the rest of my life paying for my mistakes? Shouldn’t following my father’s orders and finding out I actually want a life in law at all be redemption enough?

_But it’s not, and he knows it’s not, he has to face that it’s not. And now that he’s being forced to thanks to his impending separation from Kurt and return to the chains of reality, the old familiar slow burn of self-hatred and fury is sparking back to life and that is dangerous and he doesn’t care._

_“Wien Westbahnhof,” comes the tinny overhead announcement, jolting Sebastian out of his murky cloud of thought. But as he slings the strap of his bag over his shoulder and prepares to disembark, he can’t shake the irritation and frustration of his entire goddamn life away, and he feels his mood growing blacker by the moment._

_ _

_You know what? That’s just fucking fine. If he can’t figure out how to rebuild the walls that should have kept Kurt out, then he’s just going to have to push him away, and this should help him manage that beautifully._

Here, again, pressed together from the chest down like they’re trying to become one person, or maybe just to imprint themselves on each other, whichever is more possible and permanent.

“Now,” Kurt says again, but the command is wispy and Sebastian feels his lips curve in a smile against Kurt’s neck. Slow and lazy, he rocks his hips against Kurt’s, lets his cock slide over hipbone and Kurt’s slowly stirring erection.

If he wants all night to make Kurt fall to pieces over and over again, he’ll take it, and he knows Kurt will let him.

_Distracted by his own efforts to bury his confusing feelings as deep down as he can push them, it escapes Kurt’s notice that Sebastian hasn’t smiled at all since they met up at the Palmenhaus restaurant._

_At first._

_He notices about the same time he realizes that Sebastian has also not really said anything in words with more than one syllable for the last hour. Or…well. Said anything. At all. Actually. Nothing of substance, anyway, just monosyllabic replies, snorts and grunts and sharp little laughs spiked with bitterness. Kurt’s stomach knots up as he takes in the circles under Sebastian’s eyes, the way he’s picking at his food, the complete lack of life in his face._

_It’s not how he imagined this night going at all._

_ _

_It hurts to swallow down the lump in his throat, and he has to grab his wine to help it slip away. “Did you sleep at all on the train?”_

_“Enough.”_

_Doubtful. “You just look tired.” Instinct is pinging danger signals in his mind, telling him to find some way to fix this, but how? How, when he doesn’t know what’s wrong and Sebastian is less than forthcoming when he’s in a_ good _mood, let alone stewing in this kind of simmering discontented malaise? All Kurt can think to do is aim for light and teasing. “If you’d come by plane you’d have gotten here sooner and we could have taken a…nap. Together.” With a smile that he hopes doesn’t look as nervous as it feels, he slips a forkful of veal escalope between his lips and pulls the utensil back out slowly, letting his tongue trace along the tines and his lips as he chews in a vague attempt at being suggestive. “Or something less…mmm, restful.”_

_His aim is bad, obviously, as he watches Sebastian’s jaw tighten and his mouth press into a narrow line. “Well, I didn’t take a plane, so I guess it’s too bad I missed out.”_

_It’s the longest sentence he’s uttered yet and frankly, Kurt could have done without it and without the biting sarcasm that ran through it. But he rallies, still determined to turn things around and make something good out of their last night. “Well, we have the rest of the night, if you’re up to it.” It’s harder to keep up the flirtatiousness in the face of the stony, unmoving lack of amusement across the table, but Kurt can do nothing but keep trying. “We can get dessert here, they have a delicious terrine of plu -“_

_“Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what we’re doing and I’ll just go along with it?” Sebastian interrupts, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and his chin in the air, an expression of familiar, slightly sneering disdain twisting his face in a way that sends Kurt right back to high school and gets his back up in instinctual defense. “You obviously have a plan, so why don’t I just let you call the shots?”_

_This is shaky territory. Arguing with Sebastian is nothing like arguing with Blaine - comparing them is like trying to find more than superficial similarities between a thunderstorm and a freak tornado. Blaine would simmer for days, trying to hold back and reason his way through his pique before exploding in a burst of anger. Kurt had always been able to see the stormclouds gathering and after so many years knew all the best ways to cope, but this is completely new ground. He couldn’t say it had come out of nowhere, no, because he’s been watching Sebastian not be himself for days. But he didn’t know what to do then and he sure as hell doesn’t know what to do now except react._

_“Are you done being a jerk or can I look forward to having two massive dicks in my bed tonight?”_

Well, that was probably not…the best choice I could have made, _he thinks as Sebastian sits up and leans across the table with a vicious smirk twisting his lips._ Shit _._

 _This much, at least, Kurt_ is _familiar with, and he feels himself pull his shoulders back and lift his chin into the air, ready to do battle with the old enemy that’s wearing his current lover’s face._

Kurt drinks in the kiss, every kiss, all of the kisses, even though his lips are sore and Sebastian’s must be  _really_ sore by now. He molds his hands and fingers to the shape of Sebastian’s skull, tastes himself deep in Sebastian’s mouth, breathes in time with Sebastian breathing out.

They move slowly, just like the first time, but now it’s not a matter of getting to know each other, it’s a matter of remembering each other. Every little touch and breath and gasp and groan and the way Sebastian feels inside of Kurt, the way their foreheads feel when they break off kissing and Sebastian leans his head to rest against Kurt’s and they close their eyes to sharpen their senses of touch and taste and hearing and scent.

Kurt fills his nose with the sharp, clean smell of the Italian pine scented soap Sebastian prefers, pushes away the wishful thinking of what it would be like to always find it in his shower in New York.

Sebastian inhales sandalwood, tastes salt and sugar, touches smooth, warm skin and thick hair rumpled by his own hands.

_“Forgive me.” It’s difficult keeping his voice steady, Sebastian is so angry right now, but he tries. One, because he doesn’t want to give away just how pissed off he is. Two, because the mess he’s in really isn’t Kurt’s fault and he doesn’t want to swing his anger like a wrecking ball at the wrong building. “It’s just I’d hate to step on your toes and ruin the perfect goodbye you clearly have planned.”_

_“You did a pretty good job of it already, actually,” Kurt snaps back, his cheeks bright red and eyes a hot blue with anger. “Wasting hours of our last day together on a train, being a complete shit as soon as you got here, why did I even bother?”_

_“You’re the one who decided to make this our last day together in the first place,” Sebastian sneers back, not managing to hold back the snort of contempt that punctuates the sentence but feeling a little swirl of pleasure at the way it makes Kurt’s mouth tighten up with anger. Good, now he’s not the only miserable one. But careful, careful…he remembers what Kurt’s like when backed into a corner. And yet. “No, go on, Kurt, why don’t you tell me about your perfect Hollywood ending for your perfect Hollywood summer of discovering yourself all over again? Did it go just like you always dreamed?”_

_The words come out, and he can almost see them hit Kurt,_ does _see Kurt recoil away from them for a split second and that’s Sebastian’s only warning that he’s pushed too much, too far – and it’s not enough warning to brace himself for the push back that he knows he deserves._

_“I have a life to get back to, Sebastian! You might have a better understanding of why that would be important if you’d fucking stop running away from your own!”_

_He deserves it, he knows he deserves all of that and more after the Hollywood ending crack, yet it’s still such a punch to the gut that Sebastian feels himself falling back against his chair in shock for a full minute, just staring at Kurt. And while Kurt seems instantly regretful of the words, his mouth falling open in what Sebastian knows is going to be an apology, he doesn’t want to hear it._

_He doesn’t deserve to. This entire mess - being in Europe at all, being in…something…with Kurt, making Kurt angry enough to lash out, the ruination of the last time they’ll be together - all of it is entirely Sebastian’s fault. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s him. He knows that._

_But he can’t get the words out. He can’t ever get any of the right words out._

_Sebastian manages to fish out some Euros from his wallet before grabbing his bag and fighting up to his feet on legs that are so shaky he doesn’t know how long he can stand up. And there’s no way he can manage words at all, so he just hurls the bills down on the table and runs out, wondering how far into the Burggarten he can get before his body gives in to anger and hurt and sends him collapsing to the ground._

Kurt’s hand slips between their bodies, knuckles brushing against Sebastian’s stomach as he squirms and slides his fingers down to grip his cock. A shaky laugh bursts from Sebastian’s mouth into Kurt’s and shakes their intertwined bodies because Sebastian’s abdomen is sensitive and ticklish, especially when he’s aroused, and Kurt knows it, it’s one of his favorite things.

Sebastian is as close as he will ever, ever be to another person, as close as it’s possible to be, and he drags his hips back, his cock out, and he is hanging on to control with every ounce of willpower he possesses, not giving in to the urge to wreck Kurt, to pound into him in a frenzy of need and want and the desire to make sure he is never, ever forgotten.

_Kurt doesn’t remember leaving Palmenhaus._

_It’s a five minute walk back to the Hotel Sacher - ten if he’s really slow about it - and there’s not a moment about it he can remember except that it’s October in Vienna, so it is a little gray and a little chilly and it’s even managing to rain the exactly perfect amount to be a scene in a movie._

Why don’t you tell me about your perfect Hollywood ending?

 _The words still sting. What was he supposed to have done? Pretended this was like any other night they’d spent together? That wasn’t his style. This_ wasn’t _like any other night, it was special in ways that were beautiful and painful at the same time, and he’d wanted to show that. He’d wanted to say thank you for everything, because god fucking knew how much longer he’d have wallowed in self-pity and useless guilt if Sebastian hadn’t shown him how to remember what real living was._

_And anyway it’s not like Kurt wants an ending in the first place, but what the hell else is he supposed to do? As Sebastian himself had pointed out in Dublin, sometimes things happen the way you don’t want, and you have to make the best of it, right?_

_His absentminded feet carry him back to the hotel and up to the room they were supposed to share. And there it is, Sebastian’s suitcase that they’d sent back with the cab driver that had dropped him off. Leaned up neatly against Kurt’s laptop bag as it had been so many times these last couple of months. Looking right at home and making Kurt wonder again about the life that it might be interesting to have with Sebastian…_

_Sucking a deep, harsh breath through his nose, Kurt spins on his heel and slams back out of the room, headed straight down to the hotel restaurant._

So close. Kurt spreads his hand out across Sebastian’s back, pressing his palm and fingers down to feel how the raised area at the base of his fingers dips perfectly to fit into the valley of Sebastian’s spine, how his palm and the muscle of Sebastian’s back lay flat against each other, how he can feel the heat of blood under the surface and every little shift as Sebastian fucks him with that agonizing controlled slowness.

But Kurt knows that control is coming apart because when Sebastian is going to come, he always, always gets the same smile on his face like he just discovered sex for the first time and knows it’s never not going to be _awesome_.

_As it turns out, sufficient anger can get you all the way across the park to the memorial monument to Mozart that’s been there for 120 some-odd years. And the amount of anger Sebastian feels at being helpless in his own life, at not understanding his feelings, and not wanting to let Kurt go, well, that’s pretty fucking sufficient._

_Dumping his bag to the ground, Sebastian slumps down on the marble steps and tilts his head back, casting a sour gaze up to the angelic, slightly smug sculpted face of the world’s greatest known composer. “What do you have to be happy about?” he asks, ignoring the startled glances of passing tourists. “It’s not like you had a hell of a lot of control over your life, either.”_

_ _

_The corner of the thick stack of paper that is his formal employment contract is still peeking out of the space at the top of his bag; he can’t help but glower at it._ Stupid future _, he thinks, and it’s childish enough that it drags a tired chuckle out along with a sigh that feels like it should utterly deflate him. “Stupid future,” he repeats, aloud this time, running a hand through his hair, the last of the anger he’d started the night with abruptly draining away and leaving only regret._

_He shouldn’t have ruined tonight for Kurt. Once again, there goes his natural selfishness wrecking up the joint, leading him to make bad decisions and terrible mistakes. Once again, someone gets hurt because he’s a jackass, and once again he just walks away from the wreckage._

_But this time, at least, he can do something. For one thing, he can sack up and say that he’s sorry for being a jerk. And he can take the last few hours left in their hands and make them a refuge from the morning. Give Kurt the goodbye he deserves and send him back to his life with something good to remember._

_Sebastian stands up, dusts off his backside, and picks his bag back up, ambling off back through the park with an apology already held warm in his mouth._

As if after two months Sebastian can’t tell when Kurt is trying to make him come first. Like him tightening down around Sebastian’s cock isn’t a dead giveaway, like his little smirk isn’t the best kind of tell-tale. Like Sebastian can’t read him like a book.

Like Sebastian doesn’t know after all this time that he can send Kurt over the edge with one well-angled tilt of his hips timed with a nip of his teeth where Kurt’s neck leads into the strong curve of his shoulder.

And so Kurt does end up losing that little contest of stamina, but the long moan of ragged completion that Sebastian pours into his ear immediately after Kurt digs his fingernails into the tight globes of Sebastian’s ass is a more than sufficient consolation prize.

_“Really?”_

_Sebastian’s amused question is accompanied by the scrape of a chair away from the table where Kurt is etching intricate nonsense pictures into the top of what’s left of his cheesecake. Kurt glares over, sticking his fork into the abused pastry. “What?”_

_“We’re in the Hotel Sacher. Home of one of the most famous desserts in the world.” Sebastian’s bag hits the floor at the same time as his ass hits the chair, and he’s got a smile Kurt would almost swear is fond on his face. “And you get a cheesecake.”_

_“I like cheesecake,” Kurt grumps, sagging against the back of his chair and crossing his arms. “What do you want?”_

_For a moment, it looks like Sebastian’s going to get up and run out_ again _, and Kurt absolutely will_ not _be able to deal if he does that, for_ fuck’s _sake, he_ just _\- but no, Sebastian takes a deep breath and swallows hard before leaning over and resting his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers together and pressing his mouth to his hands for a long moment. “I want to apologize,” he begins at last, flicking his eyes up to meet Kurt’s, and Kurt can see then what it’s costing him to say it, recognizes the trust implicit in Sebastian being able to let go enough to do it. Remembers another day a long time ago when he was a spectator to what might have been Sebastian’s first sincere apology and a shiver crawls down his spine._

_Too many memories._

_“You don’t deserve to get hit with the weight of my bad decisions,” Sebastian is saying, and Kurt comes back to the present in time to see him leaning down to tug something out of his bag. “I’ve been carrying something around Europe myself, Kurt.”_

_Intrigued, Kurt leans across the table just as a heavy stack of paper lands next to his cheesecake. “Smythe, Deaton, and McIlheny Partners,” he reads, scanning the top sheet. “This is your dad’s firm.”_

_“This is my contract to work for my dad’s firm,” Sebastian clarifies, knotting his fingers together again until they’re white-knuckled. “What I’ve been running away from. As you know.” He flags a passing waiter down and orders coffee. “It actually arrived about a week before you and I met up in Paris. Just faxed over to the front desk of the hotel, no note, no preceding phone call. Just this, a nice big slap to the face.”_

_“You never said.” Kurt flips through the pages, but they’re so much legalese, nothing he understands except their place in Sebastian’s life like a collar. “When you told me the story in Amsterdam, you didn’t say you’d been carrying this around for weeks already.”_

_“Wasn’t much of a point,” Sebastian reminds him, a rueful smile on his face. “I was trying to run away from it, remember?”_

_“I guess.” He shoves it away and pulls his fork back out of his cake, scooping up a generous mouthful. “Why tell me now?”_

_The next silence is long, broken only by the hum of conversation around them and the drumming of Sebastian’s long fingers on the paper stack after he pulls it back across the table. “It’s not an excuse for my behavior - there is no excuse for me being an asshole to you - but you deserve to know what’s going on. And then you deserve my apology for making tonight all about my mistakes and how I’m not really coping with them.” Another deep breath. “I am sorry, Kurt. I shouldn’t have done that.”_

_Kurt bites his lip and pushes his cake aside. “I’m sorry too,” he murmurs low, shaking his head. “I…I sprung the end of this on you. I know I don’t…we don’t…we don’t have a claim on each other…” He ignores the way that makes his heart twist. “But you deserved better than me just making that decision.”_

_“No. It was your decision to make. You’re right, you have a life to get back to. And it’s time I stopped screwing around with mine.” Scooping up the papers, Sebastian leans down again to put them back in his bag. When he sits back up, he sends a sad smile across the table. “Kurt, I…if you want me to go find another room or even another hotel tonight, I will, but…I’d like the chance to send you home with a better last memory of me than this.”_

_Kurt doesn’t even entertain for one second the notion of being separated from Sebastian in these last hours. Not with that sadness in Sebastian’s eyes that he knows he can wipe away for at least a little while longer. “You’re not sleeping anywhere but next to me,” he replies, leaning back with an ease he doesn’t quite feel and a smile that he can’t quite turn into a laugh. “I want one last good night’s sleep.”_

He knows the minute Kurt slips out of the bed.

Sebastian lays still, keeping his breath even and thanking god that he fell into his restless sleep while on his stomach, his head turned towards the wall.

Kurt hadn’t unpacked much the night before, so his quiet journey around the room to collect his things is short.

It’s not long before the bed dips again under his weight and Sebastian feels a warm hand on his shoulder, a soft kiss on the back of his neck.

The kiss burns hot into his skin long after Kurt sighs softly and crawls carefully back out of the bed. Sebastian hears the rustle of Kurt’s bags being picked up for the last time.

There’s a soft metallic rattle as Kurt’s hand pauses on the doorknob. And then he says it.

“I’ll miss you.”

Quiet as a mouse, he lets himself out. Sebastian waits for the door to click shut behind him and for heavy booted footsteps to fade out at the end of the hall before he opens his eyes and exhales a long sigh that presses him into the bed.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

He knows what he means.


	12. These Inconvenient Fireworks

“Wake up.” The voice on the other end of the line is familiar, a little raspy, a lot contemptuous and kind of a surprise to hear when Sebastian has managed to grope around and answer the phone in his still semi-hungover, not-quite-awake stupor. “You have one hour to get yourself cleaned up and downstairs to meet your car to the airport.”

“Vivian?” Sebastian rubs his free hand down his face and tries to focus through the pounding in his head. He’s on day two of what he’s planned to be a five day bender before he finally gives up and flies back to Ohio, and he already feels every moment of excess in his skin like a thousand needles. This additional confusion is not helping. “The hell?”

“You heard me,” comes the biting reply, surrounded by a cacophony of sound that Sebastian dimly recognizes as the voices of travelers and buskers in a New York subway station. Whatever she’s up to, she’s doing it - he squints at the hotel room clock and makes the painful effort of calculating the time difference - before work. On her way into the travel agency. “Get up, shithead. You’ve got a big day ahead of you and you’ve already wasted half of it. Which is only partly my fault for taking this long to find you a flight, and you’re lucky I’m admitting that much.”

Sebastian pushes up to sitting and rubs his eyes, wishing he understood any of this. “Vivian.”

“No! There’s no time for questions.” The beeping and clicking of a subway turnstile is noisy. “I’m about to get on the train and you know that means I’m about to lose signal. Kick whatever piece of rough trade you’ve got with you out and get your shit together so I can get you to the airport. I did not spend half my time the last two months working myself into the ground so that you could end this stupid game in a cheap Belgian hotel with a scruffy looking guy and a hangover - fuck, Sebastian, do you even know what I’m going to have to do to make it so Kurt can fly Iberia again?”

Surprised, Sebastian looks over at the snoring body next to him - Friedrich, he thinks might be his name, or Gerhardt, not sure which - and blinks. “How did you know I -“

“Please. It’s like you think we haven’t gotten to be friends these last two months. I know what I’d do if I let someone like Kurt walk away from me and you know you and I are a lot alike. Doesn’t take a psychic.” Annoyance is making her voice sharper even as the connection starts to crackle and static out. “Don’t make me tell you to get the fuck out of bed again, Smythe.”

“Where am I going?” he asks, throwing the blanket aside to start following instructions, as he knows she knew he would, because she is the only woman in the world who flat out terrifies him and he’s never even met her. His feet hit the tacky carpet and he winces, scurrying around to throw his things together. “And how did you know I’m in Belgium?”

“Can’t handfeed you all my secrets, buddy.” And the connection dies, leaving him bewildered but moving as fast as he can to get ready to go. Wherever he’s going.

Friedrich-Gerhardt-Maybe-It-Was-Dieter sits up, yawning and scrubbing a hand through his bed-rumpled black hair. He glances around and, when his gaze falls on Sebastian - still naked and holding the phone to his ear while he stares at the bed - the smirky grin that had caught Sebastian’s attention at the club spreads across his face. “Hey. Come back to bed, ja?”

The voice that isn’t Kurt’s, the eyes that aren’t Kurt’s, the smile that definitely isn’t Kurt’s, all of these things in the light of dawning sobriety and the elation of being off and running again, they combine to galvanize Sebastian into action, lead him to lean down and pick up Friedhardieter’s jeans and button down, tossing them at his startled one night stand’s face. “Sorry, man,” he apologizes as he hauls ass into the tiny bathroom, and he even manages to make it sound mostly sincere. “Gotta go. Can you let yourself out?”

In an hour exactly he’s in a sedan headed for the airport and his phone is going off again. “All right, explain to me right the fuck now what is going on,” he demands, eschewing the more traditional ‘hello’ in favor of getting to the heart of the matter. “What the hell are you doing, Vivian?”

“When you’re ready to thank me, I like expensive chocolate, good red wine, and I’m allergic to Gerbera daisies,” she replies coolly, the sound of her fingers flying over her keyboard a mile a minute filling up the other end of the line. “You’ll find a ticket to Nice waiting for you at the Air France counter. You’re on your own getting a Rapide Côte d’Azur ticket - do not get a cab, you’ll waste time negotiating a fare, just get on the bus and go.”

“Hold the fuck on!” Sebastian blurts, wishing he could put more than just metaphorical brakes on this insanity. “What are you doing? Why am I going to Nice and catching a bus?”

Vivian’s fingers keep typing and her voice doesn’t lose an ounce of her cultivated cool. “You’re going to meet Kurt in Monte Carlo as soon as I figure out where he is - you’d think it wouldn’t be too hard, the entire principality is like, a square mile, I could fit it in my closet, but no, now he gets all secretive - and the two of you are going to get your shit together. I told you, I didn’t spend two months skipping dates and wasting theater tickets so that whatever the fuck you two were up to could end like this. Or end at all. No. Fuck it.”

“I don’t understand,” Sebastian says for what feels like the fiftieth time, although it might actually be only the first time he’s said it actually out loud. There’s a thrill in his stomach at the thought of seeing Kurt again, then the bottom dropping out when he reminds himself that it doesn’t matter. “I don’t -“

“I know you don’t. Kurt doesn’t either. That’s why I am officially in charge now.” The typing on the other end of the line has stilled and there’s a frown in Vivian’s voice. “More or less. Ugh, I hate when he goes off book and does his own hotel arrangements. The tricks that work in Belgium to find you are not going to work in Monaco for Kurt.”

“He’s thinking,” Sebastian replies in a low voice, remembering times when Kurt would wander off for an hour or two on his own, offering only the excuse that he needed to clear his head for a minute. Or when he’d just mentally wander off when they were together, going quiet with a book or some paper and a pen, gathering his thoughts and making a sense out of them that only he could understand. “He -“

“Oh, I know what he’s doing. I just hate it when he does it.” Silence fell, punctuated only by the blooping sound of a text message being sent. “Whatever. I got a few hours to figure it out.”

Sebastian takes a deep breath, willing the ache in his chest and stomach to dull down. He shouldn’t have answered the phone that morning, should have just continued on with his plans and then gone home. What is Vivian even doing? “Look, I appreciate what you’re doing, Vivian, but it’s kind of pointless. You know that, right?”

She sounds distracted when she replies, but still determined, her gritty voice as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. “I know that the Kurt I’ve been talking to for the last two months or whatever is the most alive I’ve heard him in two years. I know that chasing your ass around Europe has woken him up for the first time since he broke up with Blaine. I know that he finally threw that goddamn engagement ring out. Because of all that, I know that he doesn’t want to come back to New York and never see you again, so I’m making sure that doesn’t fucking happen, because he’s one of my best friends and you’re not so bad yourself.”

He sighs. “Viv. Do you know why I can’t go to New York? Did he tell you that?”

“Nope. And you’re gonna be in that car for another thirty minutes, so you’re going to tell me.”

Well. Sebastian has obeyed the woman’s orders so far. Defying them now when he’s buckled into the back seat of a town car headed to the airport seems pretty fucking ridiculous. So he takes a deep breath and just…does what she tells him to do.

Unhampered by the distractions of being stoned and next to Kurt’s gloriously naked body, the story comes easier than it did in Amsterdam. It’s a matter of fact recitation of events, almost as if he’s sitting on the other side of the town car watching a stranger tell his life story. He’s done by the time the car pulls into the drop-off at Brussels Airport, and is completely surprised when Vivian’s only response is, “Okay. So?”

Not what he expected. Not that anything Vivian does ever is, but still. “Uh, that’s it. Kurt has a life in New York and I have to go work for my dad in Ohio. There’s no way it can work, Vivian.”

“Please,” she scoffs before letting out a long peal of delighted laughter. “You’re gonna be thirty in a few years. How is it even possible that you still see Daddy as the ruler of the universe?” The words are sharp but the tone melts with affection, a much more gentle smack upside the head than he gives himself.

But still a smack. “Excuse me?” he asks, hauling his bags out of the trunk of the town car with his phone tucked between his head and shoulder. It’s awkward, but he still manages to load the two words with as much ice as a drink at Scandals.

“Don’t even. You know that snotty bullshit doesn’t work on me. And think for once.” Her sigh of exasperation rivals any that Kurt has ever aimed at him, and he can just about hear her eyes rolling at him again. “Your dad can’t get to every law firm in Manhattan and have you blacklisted. Just not possible.”

“He can get enough of the good ones,” Sebastian reminds her, feeling grim and let down by himself all over again. “I -“

But she goes on like he hadn’t even tried to interject. “And there are certain areas of law that wouldn’t care, as I am sure you know. They need all the warm bodies they can get litigating for them.” Vivian’s chair squeaks, like she’s leaning back in it. “I mean, yeah, if you were looking to make a ton of money? You’re probably fucked. But if you just want to practice law and live in New York, you can find something. Environmental groups. Non-profits. Smaller firms that take smaller cases. It’s not like you’re one of those assholes who went into law for the Lexus, right?”

She had him there. But wow, there was so much that was terrifying as fuck about the possibility of cutting himself loose and doing what he wanted. And so much more that was even more frightening when he thought about what he felt for Kurt. “It’s not that easy.”

“Not if you make it this hard, no.” An indelicate snort of laughter. “Sack up, Smythe. The hottest, smartest guy I know is waiting for you in Monaco  _if_ you can manage to grow the fuck up. Or don’t you feel the same way about him that he feels about you?”

Lightning stops his heart for a second. “What do you mean?”

“Grow up, take a chance, and find out,” Vivian snaps, and it’s clear the conversation is over. “Go check in for your goddamn flight, Sebastian.”

* * *

_ _

_Message From Vivian: why monte carlo?_

Kurt looks at his phone and sighs. Vivian has been annoyingly persistent for the last two days, which is completely wrecking the tranquility of his end time in Europe.

_Message From Kurt: I’m not sure what part of ‘I would really like some peace and quiet before I return home’ you don’t understand._

It’s rude as hell and he’ll pay for it when he does get home, but all he wants is some time to regroup before his reentry into normal life. It had hurt more than he thought it would, leaving that Vienna hotel room. Taking that last glance at Sebastian sprawled out over the bed, the weak light of the rising sun coming in through the window and splashing over his bare back. Wondering the impossible  _what if?_ one last time.

He’d had to leave and make the break, but he hadn’t been ready to just throw himself back into life at home.  _Life After Sebastian_ , as he calls it, complete with capitalization like the title of a movie. But as Sebastian himself had pointed out, this summer might as well have been a movie.

Annoying, though, how it hadn’t seemed to have a happy ending. Unless you counted the end of  _Lost In Translation_  as a happy ending and Kurt most emphatically did  _not_. It wasn’t even remotely satisfying. Ugh.

_Message From Vivian: i understood it, but i’m ignoring it. you know how this works._

_Message From Kurt: I am going to turn this phone off and ignore it until I get home._

_Message From Vivian: I am going to call your father and brother and tell them you’ve dropped out of communication in Europe after sending me a very worrying text message._

_Message From Kurt: YOU WOULDN’T._

_Message From Vivian: is that a chance you’re willing to take? dare you._

Ouch.  _Ouch_. Not that she could know…Kurt pushes his chair back away from the desk in his hotel room and tries to catch his breath in lungs that all of a sudden can’t hold enough air. He works to center himself, concentrating on the feel of the smoothly lacquered wood under his palms, the stretch of the muscles in his neck as his head hangs down between his arms, the smell of the ocean coming in through the open balcony door. The sketch he’s working on slips off the desktop and flutters to the floor, but he can’t worry about it when he’s too busy willing his heart to stop doing achingly slow backflips in his chest.

_Truth or dare?_

_Dare._

_I dare you to admit you might be falling in love with Sebastian Smythe._

Even his own mind is working against him.

* * *

“Scotch again. Neat.”

As he waits for the flight attendant to pour his drink, Sebastian contemplates the seatback phone in front of him. Well. Continues to contemplate it. He’s been glaring at the plastic receiver since he settled into his first class seat like it had personally offended him somehow.

Law school had taught him to slow down and think before he did things, just like being arrested had finally made him realize he wasn’t immune from his own stupidity. And while these are very good lessons to have learned, chasing Kurt around Europe has taught him a new one: common sense doesn’t have to completely replace spontaneity.

And then there’s Vivian reminding him that being intelligent didn’t necessarily mean he was smart.

The flight attendant sets the little plastic cup down in front of him and he sucks it down entirely before she’s even managed to replace the tiny Scotch bottle in her cart. Ignoring her look of surprise, he hands her cash for the drink, waves off his change, and snatches the phone receiver out of its cradle before he can have second thoughts.

“Randolph Smythe’s office,” greets his father’s secretary, a kind but no-nonsense woman that’s been with his father since he was made partner in his first firm years ago, so long that Sebastian considers her a surrogate aunt. “Kathleen speaking.”

“Hey, Kathleen. Is my father in?” Normally he’d have a conversation with her - ask her how her kids are doing, what’s the weather like, all the little things - but today is not that day. He’s going to lose his nerve if he doesn’t just power through this. He’ll send her flowers later or something.

“Sebastian!” She’s so pleased to hear from him, oh God. “Oh, how was Europe? Are you home now? We’re so looking forward to you joining the firm.”

He has to throttle down his hysterical laughter. Nice how his father really had just taken it as such a given, wasn’t it? This was going to be so much fun. “Ah, actually, I’m still in Europe. Calling from my plane. Sorry, Aunt Kathy, but I really need to speak to him.”

“Oh, well. There’ll be plenty of time to play catch up when you’re here,” she replies fondly. “Just a moment. I’ll connect you.”

The satellite line clicks and beeps and buzzes, finally giving way to his father’s bored, irritated voice. “Hello, Sebastian.”

“I’m not coming to work for you,” he blurts out, a little astonished at his own forthrightness. Well, four Scotches would do that to you. He hopes he can sober up before he gets to Monaco. “Thought you ought to know.”

Randolph’s side of the line is stony still with silence for a very, very long moment, long enough to make Sebastian bite back a giggle when he imagines what his father’s face must look like. “Sebastian, we have an agreement. Do I need to remind you of the consequences?”

“No. But you do have to make me give a shit about them, and let’s face it, you’re like, 1 for 100 in that department.” Oh, the grin spreading across his face is probably the biggest, dopiest grin in existence and he doesn’t  _care_. There really is such a sweet, sweet freedom in telling his father to fuck off. He’s going to buy Vivian a car or something for pushing him into this. “I actually appreciate what you’ve done for me. It turns out I really do want to be a lawyer. But I also want my own life. So I’m going to go do that and you can give that slot at the firm to someone who’d be good at being a cold fish corporate raider.”

His father literally snarls. “Sebastian Michael -“

“Oh, yeah, and I charged this call to your AmEx Platinum. Bye, Pops.” He clicks the phone off and slots the handset back into its cradle on the seat in front of him, unable to stop the giant and very stupid grin from feeling like it’s going to split his face open. There is a lot to be said for running your life like a Hollywood movie after all. He’d have to thank Kurt for that.

 _Kurt_. Now, that’s enough to wipe the smile off of his face.

No job, no home, no certainty of what’s waiting for him in Monaco, he’s  _got_  to be insane.

Too late now.

* * *

_Message From Vivian: you should go get some dinner_

_Message From Vivian: i know you haven’t eaten anything today_

_Message From Kurt: Lies. I had the chocolate mint from my pillow and a $20 can of peanuts from the minibar. I’m not hungry, Vivy._

_Message From Vivian: didn’t say you were. just go eat, Kurt._

_Message From Kurt: I don’t know what I’m in the mood for._

_Message From Vivian: something outdoors. i’m also pretty sure you haven’t left your hotel room since you got there._

Kurt glances around his room, then down at the soft cotton pants that are basically all he’s worn since he got to Monte Carlo, and concedes the correctness of the statement. A blush burns his cheeks as he realizes that it doesn’t matter whether or not Vivian leaves him alone, he’s utterly failing at regrouping for his return to real life.

Point of fact, what he is doing could be called  _wallowing_.

His hair doesn’t even bear thinking about.

_Message From Kurt: Find me something nice by the seaside and I’ll design you something amazing for the Black and White Ball._

_Message From Vivian: done and done_

* * *

“La Rose des Vents,” Vivian tells Sebastian as soon as he answers the phone in Nice.

“ _Gesundheit_ ,” he replies politely, hauling his suitcase off of the luggage carousel and heading for the left luggage service counter. “You should have that checked out.”

“Fuck off, that’s where I just booked Kurt a table, you idiot,” she shoots back, voice loaded with exasperated affection. “It’s at 8 PM, so head over there as soon as you get off the bus, got it?”

Sebastian looks down at himself in a mild panic, immediately hurling his suitcase onto a nearby bench and rummaging through it for his toiletry bag. “I look like shit, Vivian.”

“It’s not a blind date, asshole, he’s seen you naked. Brush your teeth in an airport bathroom, lay off the Scotch, and splash some water on your face.” She now sounds entirely bored by the proceedings. “And think of something nice to say when you get there.”

Sweet Jesus, of course, he’s going to have to  _express his feelings._ Fuck. Falling back on an old standby, Sebastian masks his renewed panic with sarcasm while he organizes his satchel to just hold the necessities for one night. “Oh, you didn’t write me a speech? Tsch. Not very on the ball of you.”

“Are you  _trying_  to make it so that the first time I meet you, I strangle you? After all my hard work?”

Sebastian ignores her, zipping up his bags and and resuming his trek to the luggage hold. “What’s with your hard work, anyway? Are you some kind of fairy bitchmother to the fashion gays of Manhattan?”

“I dunno, but I like the title.” Her raspy giggle is as sweet as it is unexpected. “Think I’ll get that put on my business cards.”

“Only if this insane plan of yours works,” he sighs, and hangs up, forcing a smile at the bored looking girl behind the left luggage counter.

He doesn’t know if he’s more scared that this won’t work – or that it will.

* * *

_Message From Kurt: The salad dressing was pure vinegar, the prawns taste like cardboard, and the g_ _âteau au chocolat_ _is made with sawdust._

_Message From Vivian: that restaurant comes very highly recommended. i feel as though you may be indulging in your usual thing for overdramatics and hyperbole. great. you must be feeling better, the sea air is completely doing you good. what are you up to now?_

_Message From Kurt: Post-dinner coffee, and yes, it’s decaf even if it’s not like I’m sleeping anyway._

_Message From Vivian: you could go for a nice walk on the beach. there’s one right there at la rose, i checked._

_Message From Kurt: I…could? But why?_

_Message From Vivian: it might help you sleep when you get back to the hotel, i don’t know. i’m just trying to be nice._

_Message From Kurt: And again I ask, why? It’s not like you._

_Message From Vivian: fuck you, i’m your friend. go for the fucking walk or i’ll clean my cat’s litterbox and hide the trash bag in your couture closet._

_Message From Kurt: Ah, that’s more like it. Yes, sir, sergeant, sir._

_Message From Vivian: make it a long one, or you’ll regret it._

* * *

_Message From Vivian: where the fuck ARE you_

_Message From Vivian: kurt’s finished with dinner goddamn it, had him go for a walk on the beach but i have no idea how much longer i can stall him, you should be in monte carlo by now._

_Message From Sebastian: Stéphane says we’ll be there in about ten minutes, can you send me directions to that restaurant?_

_Message From Vivian: who the fuck is Stéphane??_

_Message From Sebastian: Stéphane is a very nice cheese distributor who was able to rent one of the last cars in Nice after the Rapide broke down and after an hour of discussions, they decided not to bring in another bus since it was the last one of the night. Oh, France. Never change._

_Message From Vivian: what_

_Message From Sebastian: It’s a little slower, but I’m getting there. Directions?_

_Message From Vivian: jesus. ass end of the principality, right by the grimaldi forum, like the next right after you pass the forum. ask the guy to get the lead out, okay?_

_Message From Sebastian: You are making me incredibly nervous._

_Message From Vivian: not nervous enough or you’d be there already._

* * *

Vivian was right. The fresh air was doing him a world of good, actually. Kurt wasn’t going to go so far as to think he might actually sleep tonight, but he might be tired enough to be in bed and staring at the ceiling before 1 AM.

But he still isn’t ready to go  _home_. Not really. He’s going to have to force himself to leave, isn’t he? Easy re-entry into normality was a myth.

Sand plumes up in front of him as he kick-steps his way down the beach, shoes in hand and trousers rolled up almost to his knees. He’d wondered after his split with Blaine how he’d resume his normal life, and the answer of course was that he couldn’t. Because he’d left his without-Blaine life behind in  _high school_ , and if there was ever a so-called ‘normal life’ he didn’t want to resume, it was that one. He’d had to carve out a new life. New routines, new ways of doing things, figuring out how to maneuver under his crushing guilt and the hole in his existence left behind by Blaine.

Leaving Sebastian behind is less complicated in a lot of ways because of the shorter amount of time they’d spent together, and yet. And yet. There’s still a hole left behind. And now instead of guilt he’s going to have to figure out how to carry the burden of  _missing_  Sebastian, missing his sleepy smirk in the mornings, missing his recklessness that had been only a little restrained by adulthood, missing the way they could sit together saying nothing and it was comfortable, like two soft old sweaters tangled together in a laundry basket.

He still doesn’t know…why. Why it happened, why it just  _works_ , why he wants it so badly that losing it is hurting almost as much as having to leave Blaine had.

A breeze comes in off the sea and cuts through Kurt’s shirt, making him shiver and wrap his arms around himself. “I wasn’t looking for this,” he snaps at no one, gritting his teeth and taking in a deep breath. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

But there is no one more than Kurt Hummel who knows that the most unlikely things come when you least expect it.

Too bad these things don’t come with an instruction manual, though.

* * *

Stéphane is a really nice guy. When he’d seen Sebastian nearly having a meltdown at the indifferent Rapide service representative, he’d been quick to offer a seat in his rental car and refused to even entertain the notion of accepting payment, even for gas money. He hasn’t asked any questions as to why it’s so important for Sebastian to get into Monte Carlo, doesn’t listen to obnoxious music, and not once has he poked fun at Sebastian’s fluent but indelibly American-accented French. He is a godsend.

He is also possibly the slowest driver of an Alfa Romeo that Sebastian has ever had the misfortune to meet.

Because Stéphane is nice and because things are going much better than Sebastian had had any right to expect, he ignores Vivian’s admonition to demand speed and tries to keep his twitching to a minimum as he wonders what to tell Kurt when he sees him.

Is this how people fall in love? Like falling off a cliff, flailing and panicked and terrified? It can’t be. Who would  _want_  this if they knew what it felt like? Why doesn’t he  _not_  want it? Because as confusing and entirely frightening as this is, it’s still infinitely preferable to not having it. But he doesn’t know what to  _do_ with it. He feels like someone has just handed him a handful of lit explosives and wandered off with nothing more than a cheery, “Try not to blow up!”

He had never wanted this. It was supposed to be one night. It always  _had_  been one night before. This had started as a game, a distraction, the promise of electric sex and jetsetting excess and a diversion from his problems. It wasn’t supposed to turn into something that meant anything and it fucking well had  _absolutely_ never been intended to turn into something he wanted to keep.

What he feels for Kurt is more than a surprise, it’s the absolute antithesis of his life of impermanence and decadent self-indulgence.

Sebastian almost jumps out of his skin when Stéphane taps him on the arm. “We’re at the border,” he says, smiling warmly and gesturing at the sign that welcomes them to Monaco in French and English. “Did your friend tell you where the restaurant is?”

“Um, the first right after the Grimaldi Forum, I think,” Sebastian replies, fumbling for his phone and feeling a nasty shock when he sees he’s missed three calls and a message from Vivian.

_Message From Vivian: he’s called a fucking cab, can’t stall him anymore but he’s going to have to wait for it to get to where he is. hope to god you are almost there, fuck you for not picking up, HURRY._

Throttling down his panic, Sebastian musters up a smile and nods into Stéphane’s expectant face. “Yep. First right after the Grimaldi Forum.”

“All right. I think it shouldn’t be long, although traffic does look backed up…”

* * *

_Message From Vivian: you’re sure you wouldn’t just want to walk around a little longer? or hey, i can find you a better dessert place. maybe more coffee?_

Kurt sighs and tucks his phone away, ignoring whatever has gotten into Vivian in favor of bending down to dust off his sandy feet and slip back into his shoes. The dispatcher at the taxi place had been apologetic but said traffic was going to cause something of a delay in his being retrieved. Since he was stuck out here for at least a little while longer, he asked them to pick him up in front of a series of small boutiques across the street from the restaurant. He figured he’d windowshop as he waited, but instead Kurt finds himself with his head tipped up to look into the sky.

The city lights of the tiny metropolis of Monte Carlo blot out most of the natural brightness of the night sky, but if Kurt squints and tilts his head, here and there he can make out pinpoints of starlight in the hazy purple-orange clouds.

A romantic part of him that he thought had shriveled up and blown off in a dusty wind long ago wonders where in the world Sebastian is and if he’s looking at the stars, too.

* * *

Stéphane waves off Sebastian’s offer of money one last time before shooing him out of the Alfa in front of La Rose des Vents, ignoring the honking of impatient cars behind him as he waves goodbye.

_Message From Vivian: he can’t be far, the beach is part of the restaurant, and he probably would go back to the restaurant to wait for his cab._

Hitching his bag higher on his shoulder, Sebastian darts down into La Rose’s outdoor patio, scanning the crowd of chattering patrons for Kurt’s familiar, unmistakable face. But the crowd is small, looking them over doesn’t take long, and Kurt isn’t there.

Glancing down at the beach makes his heart sink to his feet. There aren’t many people down there, either, but they’re all coupled off. None of them are a single tall figure moving with a confident grace that Sebastian’s been committing to memory for the last eight weeks.

Had it, after all, been too much to hope that this would work? This is exactly why Sebastian hates romantic movies of any kind. They really do set up all kinds of bizarre expectations. And before he’d fallen for Kurt he would never have thought he would have gone in and been the kind of guy who was sure he could spot the person he most wanted to see in any crowd.

This is entirely stupid. And worse is how depressed he’s feeling about it. With a scowl, Sebastian turns around and trudges up the steps back to street level. He’s just wondering if Vivian will get him a place to stay when it hits him in the chest like a cannonball.

It’s Kurt, it is  _actually Kurt_ , mere feet away, the unmistakable patrician tilt of his head across the street, the flash of a smile as he bends down to greet the driver of the cab that’s just arrived for him. And even though Sebastian knows full well it’s not the end of the world if he lets Kurt get into that car, even though he knows Vivian could find out where Kurt’s staying if she really had to, now that Kurt is right there and the moment of reckoning is upon them, Sebastian can’t wait another minute, can’t lose this chance or his courage really will fade away right with the departing cab.

Kurt straightens up and Sebastian throws his arm into the air in a frantic wave. “Kurt!”

As Kurt’s head jerks up in surprise, Sebastian breaks into a run.

* * *

“Kurt!”

His name. His name ringing through the air, in a voice he hadn’t really expected to hear for a long time, if ever again. Shock rockets through him as he frantically scans the street before him, the crowds of pedestrians and speeding cars, his heart in his throat when he finally spots Sebastian racing across the street, hair sticking up and out every which way, a desperate look on his face. “Kurt! Wait!”

Kurt nearly has a heart attack when Sebastian dodges a Lamborghini going way too fast for such a busy throughfare. It’s a narrow escape, and he has to close his eyes to try and catch his breath from the moment of screaming terror that froze him in place.

When he opens his eyes again, Sebastian is  _there_ , standing right in front of him, gulping in deep breaths and trying to talk.

At last he manages it, and Kurt doesn’t expect the three words that tumble out of his mouth.

“I’m a douchebag,” Sebastian blurts out.

* * *

Kurt’s eyes are wide and confused and probably the most awesome thing Sebastian has seen in his life right now. He wants to laugh, feels it bubbling in his chest, but there’s no time for that – the cab’s waiting in the taxi rank, the driver looking on in interest, and Sebastian’s nerves are getting more shaky by the moment.

He never did end up preparing a speech.

“I’m a douchebag,” he repeats, shoving his hands deep into his jeans pockets. “I snore. I leave socks scattered everywhere. I burn spaghetti. I don’t give a shit about fashion, show tunes, or skin care. I forget to recycle the newspaper after I’ve read it. I still wear my UPenn sweatshirts even though they’re getting raggy. And Kurt, you would not  _believe_  how much porn I watch.”

“Okay…” Kurt replies, slowly, his eyes getting wider with every fault listed.

“I don’t think I can be broken of my guy-ogling habit,” Sebastian confesses, growing horrified at his inability to stop himself now that he’s gotten started. “I’m kind of a workaholic. I hate going to the movies. I probably drink way too much. I think the most romantic thing I know how to do is be nice to you when you’re tired and cranky.”

“Is there a point to this litany of your perceived flaws?” Kurt asks, eyebrows arched nearly into his hair. “I mean, I assume there’s a reason you hunted me down to publicly flagellate yourself.”

Swallowing, Sebastian nods. “I’m not perfect. I know it, and I figure after two months you know it too, but I wanted to let you know  _how_  not perfect I am. I’m actually pretty terrible,” he realizes, suddenly beginning to wonder why he’s doing this, because he would be an  _awful_  boyfriend. Especially coming in after Blaine, Teenage Dream and Boy Wonder. “I’m not Blaine. Like, at  _all_. And right now I’m starting to think I’ve made a really terrible mistake.”

* * *

Sebastian turns away, looking completely shell-shocked and like he’s about to wander off into traffic. Kurt reaches out and grabs him by the wrist. “Where are you going?”

“Home. Ohio. Shit, I can’t, I just told my dad where to shove his ‘job offer’, fuck, I am never listening to Vivian again.” He tries to pull his wrist out of Kurt’s grip, but Kurt just holds on tighter, trying to make sense of things and determined not to let go of Sebastian a second time. Hope is uncurling warm in the pit of his stomach, and he tries to clamp down on it but it’s no use. All he can do is take a deep breath and try to keep from shaking.

“What does Vivian have to do with this?” he asks, like he doesn’t know, like all of her incessant questions and meddling haven’t just fallen into place with a clarity that almost clicks. “What do you mean about your dad? And why does the fact you’re not Blaine even  _matter_?”

Sebastian’s face is a bizarre mingling of pleading and hopelessness. “Kurt, just…let it go. Forget I came here. I’m a mess, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Kurt snaps. “I have way too many questions now to just let you go a second time. Why,” he begins, punctuating each word with a sharp shake of Sebastian’s arm, “are. You. Here?”

“I came here to ask you for a chance, okay?” Sebastian is snapping back and still trying to pull his wrist free. “I told my dad to fuck off so I could be free to move to New York and see if we could give whatever the hell we have a real shot. But look at you – you don’t deserve to saddle yourself with a fuck-up with no job or prospects or even a place to live, Kurt. It doesn’t matter how I feel about you, you deserve better. You deserve Blaine.”

“But I left Blaine, I left him, Sebastian,” Kurt points out, feeling the hope in his stomach rising and mingling with wispy wonder and fond exasperation at this uncharacteristically awkward and wretched Sebastian Smythe, who is so lost in his self-loathing he doesn’t even seem to realize what he said – but that’s fine, because Kurt heard it anyway. “What do you mean, how you feel about me? How do you feel?”

Sebastian’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh, shit, is right.” The glee Kurt’s feeling now is twisting his face into the manic grin he usually tries to keep under tight rein, but fuck it. “Why are you here? Tell me. Really tell me.”

Sebastian pulls at his trapped hand, Sebastian looks around like he wants someone to rescue him, and in the end, Sebastian sighs and looks at Kurt, resigned, visibly gathering courage he doesn’t usually lack. “Do you know what I’ve been doing the last two months? Like, really doing, not just fucking you. Although in case you missed it, we do have incredible sex.”

“We do,” Kurt agrees, nodding his head cheerfully. “What  _have_  you been doing, Sebastian?”

There’s one last futile effort to get away before Sebastian replies, “I’ve been watching you remember who you are. Who you  _really_  are. I’ve been figuring out that you’re not at all who I thought you were. I’m not done watching, I’m sure as hell not done figuring you out, and I don’t want you to go back to New York without me, okay? I want to finish what we’ve started. I want a chance, even though I’m a total shit who doesn’t deserve it, I -”

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Kurt chants, pulling Sebastian in close and kissing him hard, taking all Sebastian’s breath away and into his own lungs, wrapping the fingers of his free hand around the back of Sebastian’s neck as he rests their foreheads together, eyes closed as he feels like he has to work to keep from taking off into the sky. “Oh, my god, just shut up, Sebastian, you  _idiot_. Yes. Please. For the love of god, come back with me. I don’t care about anything else. We’ll figure it out, we’ll find you a job and a place to live, you’ll stay with me until we work it all out, but oh for fuck’s sake,  _yes_  I am giving us a chance, I am  _not_  letting you out of my sight again.”

“You don’t have to,” Sebastian breathes, his voice hitching in the middle with a shuddering breath. “Give me a chance, I mean, I know I’m not -”

“I know you’re not Blaine, and believe me when I tell you I would never want you to be,” Kurt assures him, releasing Sebastian’s wrist to tangle their fingers together. “If you were Blaine, I’d  _leave you_. Yes, he’s amazing and a great person, but so are you. I let him go, Sebastian, I don’t want to let you go.  _You_  are who I want. Not Blaine. Please, Sebastian…” He searches for something, anything to say that could convince Sebastian to take the chance he wanted. His brain races, picking through Barcelona, Vienna, Rome, Dublin, Venice, Amsterdam…there. Kurt’s eyes fly open. “Truth or dare?”

Sebastian blinks his own eyes open. “What?”

“Truth or dare?” Kurt puts all the urgency he feels into the three little words. “Come on.”

Sebastian’s bewildered laugh shakes them both, making Kurt smile wider and want to melt into the warmth at the core of it. “Kurt, seriously, come on, you have to be kidding.”

“I am not. Serious as a heart attack,” Kurt promises, trying to be solemn and serious about it but he can’t wipe the smile off of his face. “Sebastian, pick one. Truth or dare. Let’s do this here and now.”

Still laughing, Sebastian tilts his head back and pretends to think about it. “I think it’s my turn, actually.” His face is relaxing with every chuckle, and when he looks back at Kurt he’s even grinning a little. “Yeah. Pretty sure it’s my turn.”

“I don’t care, and you’re stalling. Pick. Truth or dare.” Kurt’s heart is in his throat.

Silence stretches between them as Sebastian smirks in disbelief at Kurt, waiting for the punchline. He shrugs at last, evidently deciding that Kurt’s not budging until he gets an answer. “Fine. Dare.”

For all that it’s a dare, it’s the ultimate moment of truth. He’s gambling it all on Sebastian not running when he hears Kurt out. Kurt pulls his shoulders back and breathes in deep.

“I dare you to come back with me so I can show you how wrong you are about yourself,” Kurt announces, the manic grin overtaking his face again and he just does not  _care_. “I dare you to give me all the time in the world to prove that you deserve to let me love you.”

He can actually see Sebastian stop breathing for an instant, green eyes dark with a thousand different emotions. “Love?”

Yeah, he can’t believe he said it either. “Pretty sure. Something like it, anyway. I am a  _little_  familiar with the emotion.”

“I’m not,” Sebastian replies honestly, and Kurt can see everything this conversation is costing him in every line in his furrowed brow. “I don’t know…I don’t think I can  _say_  it, yet, but…”

“If you feel it at all, that’s enough for me right now.” Taking both of Sebastian’s hands in his, Kurt begins to step them back towards the cab, whose driver has been waiting so patiently for them to get their acts together. “You can show me. Take all the time you need. Slow as you want. As long as you’re with me, I don’t care how long it takes.”

For the first time since he arrived at Kurt’s side, Sebastian looks like every uncertainty is lifting from his shoulders, letting him stand up straighter as he paces after Kurt to the cab. His familiar smirk is tilting one side of his mouth up as he warns, “You know I’m going to hold you to that, Hummel. You really want to get into a binding agreement with a lawyer?”

“With one particular lawyer, yes.” Opening the cab door, Kurt sits down and slides in, pulling Sebastian after him while he tells the driver where to go. “I mean, if you think this is the kind of game you can play.” He sighs in playful mock skepticism as the cab pulls out of the taxi rank. “It might just be beyond you.”

“I believe I hear a challenge in that voice of yours.” Slipping across the seat, Sebastian leans over Kurt, pressing him back into the cushions. “You don’t think I can handle it?”

“Different game now,” Kurt replies, breathless and excited and scared all at the same time. He pulls Sebastian down on top of him and noses up along his neck to get to his ear and whisper, “Different rules.”

“I’ve been breaking all the rules for you since we hooked up in Paris,” Sebastian whispers back, taking Kurt entirely by surprise. “With this kind of ending to the game, why the hell would I start looking to play by them now?”


	13. You Make Me Love More Than I Could Know

_Ten years down the road, they are each other’s calm places._

  
_It took a lot of learning. More patience than either of them ever thought they possessed. The acceptance that Sebastian will always be a little bit selfish and too easily lost in his own mind. That Kurt has an unerring and unstoppable instinct for going for the low blow in arguments. Peace is not an everlasting and unbreakable state of living._

  
_But they are still, each to the other, a safe harbor, a refuge, a calm place._

  
“That was an excellent dinner,” Kurt murmurs into Sebastian’s ear, pressing up against his boyfriend’s back and wrapping his arms around him. “A really, really excellent dinner.”

  
“Yes, I did do a fabulous job performing the heroic and arduous task of ordering from Wok It Off and opening all of those tiny boxes all by myself,” Sebastian jokes with a chuckle as he wipes down his tiny kitchen counter. But in the next instant, the wet rag in his hand shoots off the faux-granite surface to land with a wet plop on the floor when Kurt slides his hand down the front of Sebastian’s jeans. “Kurt…what are you doing?”

  
Kurt flips him around and kisses him, a long, filthy kiss as hot as a branding iron that leaves no doubt as to his intentions. His hand wanders up under Sebastian’s untucked button-down, palm curving against Sebastian’s waist, fingertips dimpling the taut skin of Sebastian’s back. “I’m thanking you for dinner,” he whispers against Sebastian’s mouth, rocking his hips forward in an unmistakable statement. “And, uh…christening your new apartment.”

  
_Theirs is a love that often goes unspoken but never unshown, that runs deep and stands firm on a foundation of laughter and humor and a wry mutual understanding. They orbit each other, always aware of each other’s presence, but never intruding. The relationship is a well oiled machine, a key in a lock, a complete and cohesive unit._

  
_Time is often spent in silence, talking without words. They never did get the knack of snuggling, but they are frequently touching. They can’t not. Their idea of a relaxing evening is taking up their entire sofa with case notes and novels and design sketches, sitting back to back with spines aligned, leaning on each other and propping each other up as they breathe in tandem. Glasses skid down noses, hair gets rumpled, no words are spoken and they are unbelievably content._

  
“We’ll start in here.” Kurt’s statement is carried on a hot breath to Sebastian’s throat, where he’s busy mouthing kisses as he undoes the buttons of Sebastian’s shirt. His hands skim over Sebastian’s chest, up to his shoulders, pushing the shirt off to puddle and dangle at his elbows. Sebastian can only hold on to the counter, his knuckles white as his fingers curl tight around the edge.

  
“Oh, god,” he gasps out as Kurt’s hand slips once more into his jeans, this time going straight under the waistband of his boxer-briefs to encircle his cock. Sebastian squeezes his eyes shut and lets his head drop back, closing himself off to every sensation but that of Kurt’s lips on his neck, of Kurt’s hand slowly stroking at his erection. His knees are trembling as Kurt works, almost giving out when Kurt slips his thumb over the wet slit at the tip of Sebastian’s cock.

  
“And then we move into the living room,” announces Kurt in a playful tone as he gently, but very literally, leads Sebastian out of the kitchen by his dick.

  
_The separate living arrangements only lasted a year, and only that long because of Sebastian’s lease. It took mere weeks for each of them to move belongings into the other’s space - a toothbrush here, a bottle of aftershave there. Sketchbooks scattered all around Sebastian’s tiny living room. Law review journals tucked among the vintage issues of Vogue at Kurt’s loft. Very few nights ever passed with them actually sleeping in their separate apartments, so it was easy to give up in the end and share Kurt’s place again as they had for the first two months after their return from Europe._

  
_After a few more years at a small firm specializing in environmental law, Sebastian is recruited to a larger firm on the well-earned strength of his own record and reputation, and he feels like he can breathe easily at last. That he might at last feel like he really is Kurt’s equal in every way now. And so he asks Kurt…not to marry him, but to build a house with him. A home, their home, together._

  
_Kurt says yes._

  
“Aren’t you happy with your housewarming gift now?” Deliberately widening his eyes in a parody of innocence, Kurt has to work to hide how very delicious he finds the sight of Sebastian, shirt still undone, jeans unbuttoned to expose the thatch of chestnut hair that disappears into his underwear. Sebastian’s hands are wrapped around the sturdy iron curves of an elaborate wall-mounted candelabra that had taken the two of them most of the afternoon to securely affix to the wall. Kurt knew Sebastian had wondered (and bitched) about the complicated gift; it was a treat now to see understanding dawn in his eyes. “Hm?”

  
“Uh-huh…” Coherent speech seems to be escaping Sebastian - not really a surprise to Kurt, not given that he’s slithered down to his knees and pulled Sebastian’s jeans and underwear down enough to expose the thick, bobbing length of his erection. He can’t stop himself from licking his lips at the sight, as he always does.

  
God, Sebastian is just…mouthwatering. All tanned skin and lean muscle and long legs and the ass of a dancer turned habitual jogger…and that cock.

  
Kurt  _loves_  that cock. He loves pretty much everything about Sebastian, really, but  _goddamn_  if that cock doesn’t rank high on his long list of pros. Kurt reaches forward to grab Sebastian’s hips and opens his mouth over the heavy hang of the rosy head, taking a deep breath before diving down and savoring every inch that fills his mouth and throat.

  
_They choose Connecticut, because it’s within commuting distance of Manhattan and because there are quiet little beaches, and Sebastian still loves beaches, and Kurt still loves Sebastian, so it works out._

  
_The home they end up building is full of light and windows to let in the sun through the leaves of the trees that surround it. Kurt puts up framed sketches of some of his more iconic designs, mingling them with the antique framed maps that Sebastian likes to collect. There are shelves and shelves of books and magazines_ everywhere _, in every room. Little Bohemian touches that are distant echoes of Kurt’s first days in New York fill niches and spaces here and there - quirky sculptures, lamps that cast warm golden light and are trimmed in beaded fringe, unusual pieces of furniture upholstered in scraps of vintage fabric._

  
_Their favorite rooms are the big, open kitchen - Sebastian did eventually learn to cook some things under Kurt’s tutelage, so they do that together sometimes - and the positively indulgent bathroom, where soapy kisses and slippery gropes are frequently exchanged._

  
_The whole place is cozy and unusual and completely, entirely their home. It could be no one else’s._

  
Sebastian has always prided himself on his blowjob skills.

  
He  _reveres_  Kurt’s.

  
His whole entire universe is tight knuckles and edges of wrought iron creasing his palms and Kurt’s sucking, eager mouth on his cock.

He’s definitely, absolutely,  _unquestionably_  all right with that.

  
Sebastian’s knees are still trembling and he is now grateful indeed for the bizarre candelabra he’d been cursing mere hours before in the struggle to mount it on the wall. He holds on tight and marvels at how very much he appreciates having a hot, talented, and wickedly intelligent boyfriend like Kurt. _This must be what winning the lottery feels like_ , he thinks, a ragged groan edging its way out of his throat as Kurt’s hands on his ass encourage him to fuck his cock down Kurt’s throat.

  
Groans shift quickly to gasps and moans as he gets close, so close, he -

  
Kurt slides up to his feet, lips red and glossy with saliva that he licks clean with an impish grin. “I think we ought to test just how sturdy that new bed of yours is,” he all but purrs, and Sebastian can’t even find it in him to be mad about the fact that he was two seconds from coming his brains out and still hard as a fucking rock when Kurt pulled off.

  
_Kurt mended fences with Blaine a couple of years into dating Sebastian; Blaine and his partner Philip are frequent guests now, and good friends. Blaine teaches kindergarten, Philip is a history professor, completely unlike Kurt in every way with his actual tweed blazers, floppy hair and horn rimmed glasses. He adores Blaine and Blaine is obviously head over heels for him._

  
_When they come up to Connecticut, they always bring a bottle of the wine they make together on weekends. Which, since it’s Blaine and Blaine always was a perfectionist, is excellent. Sebastian jokes that they should move to California and open their own vineyard and Philip groans and squeezes Blaine’s hand as he retorts that Sebastian wouldn’t be saying that if he’d been around for the phase of learning about winemaking that had Blaine boring everyone who stood still for five seconds with facts about seasons and varietals and noses and…_

  
_They’re happy, really and truly happy together, and it makes Kurt happy to see Blaine genuinely happy, which in turn makes Sebastian happy, too._

  
_So it makes sense that when Sebastian and Kurt do get around to getting married, Blaine is Kurt’s best man. Who else could it have ever been?_

  
_Vivian stood up for Sebastian. She said it was her right for being instrumental in making them so disgustingly happy, and really, neither of them could - or wanted to - argue with that._

  
_Getting married is really just a formality, an issue of paperwork and legalities. They didn’t need it to prove anything. They’d known they were in it for the long haul in Monte Carlo._

  
_The honeymoon was in Venice. They go back every year._

  
He likes getting fucked by Sebastian so much that it’s not often they go the other way around, but Kurt’s feeling frisky and like he wants to see Sebastian come to pieces under him tonight. “Face down, ass up,” he orders cheerfully as he gives Sebastian a playful smack across the butt and pushes him down onto the bed. Their clothes are already thrown haphazardly around the tiny bedroom, a shirt adorning a standing lamp here, jeans falling off of the laundry hamper there. “Lube?”

  
“Bedside table,” is the muffled reply from Sebastian, who has fallen across the bed and faceplanted into the pillow, ass obediently in the air and his knees spread wide. Kurt takes a long moment to admire the sight - an ass he could bounce a quarter off of, cock hanging darkly heavy and pearled with pre-come at the tip - before grabbing the necessaries and climbing up onto the queen sized bed behind his boyfriend.

  
“Don’t come yet,” he warns as he wraps one hand back around Sebastian’s cock and starts carefully pressing the index finger of the other into his ass.  

  
“Then get your damn hand off my dick,” Sebastian groans, sounding like he just swallowed glass, it’s so rough and tortured.

  
Kurt sighs but relents. “You take the fun out of everything,” he mock-complains, twisting his finger and enjoying the helpless moan Sebastian lets slip from between clenched teeth.

  
_They don’t have any pets, not even a fish. They’re not much into plant life either - they have an herb garden in the kitchen windowsill and they have some potted plants in various places around the house, but nothing high maintenance._

  
_Sometimes they think about adopting a child. They’re not sure. They’re so busy, and they like their time together so much._

  
_Each one thinks he’d make a questionable father, but that the other would be_ amazing _at it._

  
_But it’s not an overwhelming desire, and right now they’re happy with each other and can’t see a day yet when they’ll get enough of just the two of them, so they leave it._

  
Nothing has any right to feel this amazing.

  
 _You laugh at the term pillowbiter,_  Sebastian thinks hazily as Kurt slowly pushes inside and fills him up,  _until you’re the one with a mouthful of 1000 threadcount cotton and genuine goose down._

  
And then there is no room for thought anymore, only twisting his fingers into the sheets and muffling his noisy groans into the pillow. Kurt’s hands are tight on his hips, holding him as still as possible as he starts to move, dragging his cock slowly out and pushing just as slowly back in. His breathless, musical sighs are one of Sebastian’s favorite sounds, one of the only things that can make him hold back most of the filthy litany of curses he used to let out during sex. Now all he wants to hear are the noises he can make Kurt make, the slap of Kurt’s skin on his, the squeak of the bedsprings and the creak of the uneven wood floor.

  
They fall into a slow, easy, steady rhythm, pull and push, give and take, with a timing that’s etched into their nerves and synapses after all these months together.

Sebastian inhales deep and looks back over his shoulder, his eyes meeting Kurt’s and he can’t help but smile before he drops his head back down, because it’s so  _good_. He’ll count the fingerprint bruises on his hips in the morning and grin into the mirror, just like he does every time, knowing he’s pretty much the luckiest son of a bitch in New York, if not the world.

  
Kurt leans down, his chest to Sebastian’s back, and Sebastian feels a kiss pressed to his shoulder before Kurt quickens his pace and reaches down to take Sebastian’s cock in hand, and he’s been so close for so long now and it’s just so  _good_  that he goes over almost as soon as Kurt touches him, burying his long, drawn out groan of pleasure into the brand new pillows as he comes hard enough to curl his toes.

  
Kurt strokes him through it, trembling with the effort of holding himself back until Sebastian is spent and barely able to keep from melting into a boneless pile on the bed. Only then does Kurt let go, abandoning himself to the chase of his own orgasm. Sebastian holds on tight to the bedsheets, watches over his shoulder, sees the pink flush climb up Kurt’s chest and neck, sees him biting his lip, and it’s better than any movie he’s ever watched.

  
It’s not much longer before Kurt comes with one last groaning thrust and they collapse to the bed together, panting and laughing quietly with the release of it.

  
Sex with Kurt is a much better housewarming gift than the candelabra.

  
“You know I love you, right?” Sebastian asks, running his thumb over Kurt’s cheekbone, and smiling when Kurt grabs his hand and just holds it there, holds it to his face, and sighs in contentment. “You do know that?”

  
“Don’t you ever forget it, either,” Kurt tells him in return, turning his head just enough to drop a kiss into Sebastian’s palm.

  
_They still have arguments. Sebastian never did learn to recycle the newspaper. Kurt can’t stand all of the threadbare, ragged UPenn sweatshirts in the laundry. Sebastian finds the array of facial moisturizers and unguents in the bathroom to be completely baffling. Kurt had no idea so much porn existed in the world._

  
_But they still can’t sleep well when they’re separated._

  
_They learn to compensate, to compromise, and to cooperate._

  
_It’s worth it in the end, after all._

  
Kurt wakes up the next morning alone, but the shower is running in the bathroom and the sound of some old Snow Patrol song is warbling out along with the steam.

  
_Worry not, everything is sound_   
_This is the safest place you’ve found…_

  
Just as Kurt decides to maybe get up and join Sebastian in hygiene and song, the water shuts off and the curtain rattles on the rail. The song is interrupted by the sound of teeth being brushed, which in turn is interrupted by a knock on the apartment door.

  
Sebastian comes out of the bathroom, completely naked and dripping wet. There’s a frown on his face as he removes the toothbrush from his mouth. “Did you order breakfast delivery or something?”

  
“No.” Kurt sits up and shakes his head, pushing his hair back. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  
“It’s Saturday. Everyone knows I was moving in this weekend, I told them to stay away. Who could it…” A mischievous smile splits his face. “No. Do you think…”

  
Kurt stares, confused. “What?”

  
“Come on! Do you think it’s the missionaries?” Sebastian’s face is lit up with a positively unholy glee. “Remember, you told me about them? The door to door guys with the Bibles? I gotta go find out.” He heads out of the bedroom, toothbrush still in hand.

  
“Sebastian! You forgot your towel!” Kurt scrambles out of bed, looking around for something to cover himself and then to cover Sebastian.

  
“No, I didn’t,” is the cheerful reply, accompanied by the scraping of locks being flipped and a door being pulled open. “Hey! Were you coming to share the word of God? Wait! Where are you going?”

  
_They’re both fiercely independent, individual people, with distinct personalities and quirks and characteristics. You would never confuse Kurt for Sebastian or vice versa. Their lights and darknesses overlap and intertwine, their similarities and differences are complementary._

  
_But they each needed someone to be vulnerable with as much as they needed someone to be strong for, and who better than someone who is so much like you that the phrase “other half” seems like the most ridiculous understatement in recorded history?_

  
_They love each other. They always will._

  
_They are each other’s calm places._


End file.
